El fin del siglo XX ofrece una excelente oportunidad para reflexionar acerca de los logros, fracasos, alcances y limitaciones de la educación, sobre todo por su potencial contribución al desarrollo económico y social. Sin embargo, esta esperanza aún no logra cumplirse de manera satisfactoria.

Third in the series Sociocultural Studies of Educational Policy Formation and Appropriation, this volume brings together scholars from North America, South America, and Europe to examine the relationship between ethnographic research and educational policy. The product of papers and discussions originally taking place at the Interamerican Symposium on Ethnographic Educational Research, the book presents both original empirical research reports and theoretical-methodological proposals for using ethnography to study and influence educational policy. After an introduction and opening chapter that highlight the different ways of conceptualizing education, education policy, and diversity across American borders, five full chapters address the relationship between ethnography and educational policy through sustained empirical attention to specific research sites and projects. The next section of the book presents shorter position statements that relate specific research or policymaking experiences and reflect on the ways that ethnography can be involved in a project of formulating or revising policy. In this section, edited transcriptions of workshop discussions give the reader a vibrant sense of the challenging issues facing educational ethnographers attempting to address policy. The book closes with a commentary by a veteran educational ethnographer. Of interest to educators, researchers, and policymakers across the Americas, this volume contributes to an ongoing dialogue about how ethnographic research can intersect advantageously with the policymaking enterprise.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Since the 1980s, Mexico has alternately served as a model of structural economic reform and as a cautionary example of the limitations associated with market-led development. This book provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary assessment of the principal economic and social policies adopted by Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s.

Although in Latin America there are no educational programs specialized in comparative education, as there are in some European, Oriental and North American universities, there are scholars who cultivate this field. With the production of this book, the authors -most of them affiliated to member organizations of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies- are walking towards a Latin American network of researchers with an interest in establishing a dialogue with non-Spanish speaking colleagues from the rest of the world. This is the reason of our effort in writing most of the chapters in English. Comparative education, as all disciplinary fields, has evolved with different ways of thinking, approaching and constructing its objects of research and analysis, which are nurtured by different epistemological traditions living together in our times, enriching and bringing complexities. From Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Mexico, the authors of the book pose questions, historical descriptions, reflections, discussions and cases to set forth their views.

In November 1998, the author arrived in Mascarilla, a small village in Ecuador's predominantly-black Chota Valley, to begin a six-month teaching assignment at the Escuela "Hernando Tquez" (the local primary school). Based both on his own observations and on the assessments offered by various former students, parents, community leaders, and Ecuadorean scholars, the author judges the educational performance of the Escuela "Hernando Tquez" to be grossly inadequate. Indeed, the various shortcomings attributed to the school (and documented as a case study in chapters three and four of this book) are so glaring that the author was led to question how such a dysfunctional school could be allowed to exist in a country where the government states that "to improve education is to improve the quality of life of Ecuador's people." Ultimately, the school's failure to provide quality education to its students forced the author to reconsider the true purpose of public education. Indeed, why does the state provide public education? It is generally assumed that the state builds and supports public schools because it believes in the potential of education to affect great changes in society. Specifically, most government officials contend that public school systems are designed with two primary goals: to contribute to the state's socio-economic development through the creation of "human capital," and to preserve and promote national unity and democratic values. Reflecting on the poor performance of the Escuela "Hernando Tquez," the author (in chapter five) asks whether there might be a hidden agenda regarding the state's role in public education. Perhaps the state's rhetoric regarding the potential socio-economic and political benefits of public education is used to obscure the public school system's true purpose. Perhaps the state (acting as the representative of society's dominant classes) provides public education in order to control oppressed groups, to ensure that they do not challenge the status quo. Perhaps the state provides public education solely in order to ensure the social reproduction of injustice and inequality. The final chapter considers the relationship between education and development, observing how the prevailing development-as-economic-development definition has often led to increased inequality and injustice. Proposing a new understanding of development based on humanist ideals, the author explores how public schools such as the Escuela "Hernando Tquez" could be transformed from the control mechanisms that they are, into the instruments of social justice that they could be.