Advanced Diploma in Right to Education and Public Policy

Class 1: The right to education: historical configuration, conceptual perspectives and current debates in Latin America

Teacher: Myriam Feldfeber

The right to education, as a human right, is the product of a historical construction and social struggles aimed at emancipation and the transformation of living conditions, in a process marked by disputes surrounding its definition, scope, and implementation. It constitutes a central legal, political, historical, and pedagogical category for understanding contemporary debates about education, schools, the state, and democracy. Far from being reduced to a formal guarantee of access, this right refers to a set of social, political, and pedagogical conditions that enable—or limit—its effective exercise. From various critical perspectives, it has been conceived as a social and human right, the realization of which implies non-delegable responsibilities for the state, but also as a field of dispute permeated by processes of inequality, commodification, and the reconfiguration of public policies.

In this class, we will analyze the different conceptions of the right to education that emerged during the institutionalization and expansion of educational systems and that still persist in the field of education. These include its understanding as a natural and personal right, as an individual right, and as a social right insofar as it is a right of citizenship, from a comprehensive rights-based approach. We will also address how, in a context of increasing commodification of social life, education tends to cease being conceived as a right and instead be understood as a commodity subject to the rules of the free market, while at the same time the meanings of public and private are being redefined in the educational field. Finally, we will discuss the conflicting perspectives that permeate the current educational landscape in Latin America.

Class 2: The international regulation of the right to education: cooperation bodies, normative system of rights and global policy initiatives.

Teacher: Myriam Feldfeber

The right to education is a historic achievement that forms part of the normative framework of the United Nations human rights system, established after the Second World War, and has become a fundamental right enabling the exercise of other rights. Understood as a pillar of the post-war international human rights system, the right to education has followed a dynamic and complex path, and with the turn of the century, its meanings and forms of regulation have undergone a substantial shift.

Throughout this course, we will examine the international regulation of this right through various legal and political instruments developed from the mid-20th century to the present (declarations, covenants, conventions, and initiatives of international organizations such as the Sustainable Development Goals or the 2030 Agenda) to understand how current disputes surrounding education are reflected in them. We will also incorporate the perspectives of various social organizations regarding the exercise of the right to education and the struggles they are waging to influence the global agenda. Finally, we will describe the tools for monitoring and evaluating the right to education within the framework of public policy.

Class 3: The right to education in tension: democratic advances and conservative grammars 

Teacher: Salomão Ximenes 

The conservative restoration in Latin America is a transnational reaction that unites Christian activism and non-religious political actors in opposition to the egalitarian legal advances achieved by popular movements at the national and international levels. The unique characteristics of this process are highlighted in the concept of (neo)conservatism, linking it to political movements of de-democratization and the restriction of rights. This conservative action has concrete effects on the right to education.

The impacts on public policies vary in each context, depending on factors such as the consolidation and secular tradition of democratic institutions, the level of recognition of rights, the correlation of forces in the religious sphere, and the resistance of popular movements and their allies. 

In many countries, clashes surrounding the legalization of education, the shaping of educational policies, and the regulation of teachers' work have become priority battlegrounds for the new right. Through the use of the notion of "gender ideology," these groups have managed to veto human rights topics in the curriculum and establish routines of persecution against teachers. This class aims to delve into the conceptual aspects of the reconfigurations of the right to education driven by these movements, as a transnational strategy that allows for the articulation of conservative coalitions around renewed legal principles applied to education. 

CLASS 4: New Right-wing movements in the field of education: confluences between neoconservatism and neoliberalism

Teacher: Myriam Feldfeber

Conceptual summary of the class

Neoliberalism and neoconservatism can be understood as processes of political and ideological recomposition in response to the crisis of the welfare state. The term “New Right” encompasses a heterogeneous set of perspectives, whose distinctive features are particularly visible in the realm of educational policies. The aim of this class is to analyze the neoliberal and neoconservative foundations that underpin the so-called New Right in the field of education. It also proposes to describe the proposals and policies promoted by conservative sectors and the setbacks these represent in relation to the right to education. Finally, these perspectives will be compared with the proposals of social movements focused on realizing this right, based on a mapping of initiatives developed in different countries and their implementation in diverse historical and territorial contexts.

CLASS 5: The rise of the far right, agenda items and main political strategies

Teacher: Rodolfo Elías

Conceptual summary of the class

In this class, we will analyze the rise of the far right, considering both global trends and their specific characteristics in Latin America. We will describe the far right 2.0 and the neo-reactionary movement (NRx), the role of Silicon Valley giants and their critiques of liberal democracy, the notion of equality, and historically won rights, including the right to education. Regarding far-right governments in the region, we will analyze the conditions that enabled their rise to power and their policies of dismantling the rule of law and curtailing democracy. We will also describe the construction of neoliberalism "from below" and the transformations in subjectivity. We will outline their agendas and main policy strategies, especially those related to the so-called "culture war" and their proposals in the field of education. We will work on mapping how these right-wing movements are advancing in the region.

CLASS 6: Private actors in the public sphere: policy networks and privatization processes in the educational field

Teachers: Myriam Feldfeber and Rodolfo Elías

Conceptual summary of the class

The presence of civil society organizations and private actors seeking to influence public policy is not a new phenomenon. In the field of education, this presence has increased in tandem with the transformation of the State's role as guarantor of the right to education. However, throughout this century, we have witnessed the formation of policy networks that bring together civil society organizations, foundations, and national, regional, and multinational business groups, which, in some cases, along with state actors, are playing an increasingly prominent role in defining the agenda and implementing educational policies. While these networks are shaping new forms of governance associated with both the interests of civil society and the market, they are also driving processes of commodification and privatization of and within education, processes that have intensified since the pandemic. In Latin America, civil society organizations linked to business groups have proliferated, seeking to influence public policy with the aim of changing the course of education under the premise of improving the quality of educational systems. In this regard, it is necessary to develop new conceptual tools to understand how these networks operate in shaping educational policies at the local, regional, and global levels, and the role they have played in the privatization of education in Latin America in recent decades.

CLASS 7: Educational policies and inequalities: conceptual debates from the perspective of school democratization

Teacher: Inês Barbosa de Oliveira

Conceptual summary of the class

Concerns about how the dynamics of inequality affect the effective enjoyment of the right to education have intensified with the expansion of compulsory schooling from the 90s to the present. This class will focus on how educational policies not only influence but also shape educational inequalities, conditioning the meanings and scope of the right to education. In this sense, it is important to understand the impact of recent public policies on expanding or restricting the conditions for educational democratization. From a multidimensional and dynamic perspective on inequalities (in their material, cultural, and subjective dimensions), the dynamics of their production, reproduction, and resistance within the political and educational sphere will be discussed, while simultaneously mapping the cleavages related to class, gender, and race, and their expressions in the structure of opportunities at the territorial level. To this end, the main conceptual debates surrounding inequalities in contemporary capitalism will be explored: poverty, inequality, exclusion, and fragmentation. From this common framework, the social consequences will be analyzed in terms of deepening and redefining social and school inequalities of the policies of the extreme right and of the social dynamics through which the most concentrated groups accumulate advantages while depriving the most vulnerable groups of rights and subjecting them to the accumulation of disadvantages.

CLASS 8: Right to education, pedagogies and schooling

Teacher: Alejandra Birgin

Conceptual summary of the class

Starting with a historical overview of the forms the right to education has taken in Latin America since the mid-20th century and its relationship to inequality, we will focus on the analysis of the 21st century. To this end, we will address the new regime of inequalities and its relationship to the growing challenge to schooling (which affects both institutional structures and the processes of educational transmission). We will pay particular attention to the pandemic's effects on the right to education, exploring the pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic phases (Zelmanovich, 2023) to understand both the trajectory of the problems and the new perspectives they bring. We will examine changes in the conditions of schooling and in the discourses that regulate its transmission; the processes of territorialization and deterritorialization of education under the auspices of new technologies based on "solutionism"; and their recontextualization in the region according to the multiple cleavages of inequality.

CLASS 9: The new regime of inequalities and changes in teacher training and work

Teacher: Alejandra Birgin

Conceptual summary of the class

Within the context of the struggles over the right to education in Latin America and their relationship to the diverse perspectives and conceptions surrounding teaching, we will analyze how teacher policies are constructed, both for teacher training and for the work of teaching itself. We will understand this relationship as a space that articulates conflicts, interests, and proactive perspectives that are part of these struggles. The results of this power dynamic contribute to the inequalities in the education system while simultaneously reshaping the hierarchies and authority of the teaching profession and its relationship with the community within the context of increasing algorithmization and new digital governance. We will discuss how the relationship between contemporary issues and education in teacher training can be a central debate for deconstructing these inequalities. This involves the struggle surrounding the recognition of the political and pedagogical dimension of the teaching profession, which includes the concern for producing a different understanding of the era in which we live.

CLASS 10: Educational policies of neoliberal ruptures and autonomist models for the region

Teacher: Orlando Pulido Chaves

Conceptual summary of the class

In terms of educational policies, Latin America and the Caribbean are far from presenting a unified landscape. The turning point for analyzing them lies in the progressive consolidation and diversification of the rights-based approach in contrast to the mercantilist trend driven by neoliberalism, and the emergence in the 2000s of a scenario of ruptures, continuities, and shifts related to the application of policies based on neoliberal approaches and the reactions against them. Within this scenario, three trends emerged: 1) One, attempts to break with neoliberalism, which grouped into two “paths” or variants: 1) The “autonomist” path, being the most radical, represented by Venezuela under Hugo Chávez; Bolivia under Evo Morales; and Ecuador at the beginning of Rafael Correa's government. The most radical, in Venezuela, proclaimed itself not only anti-neoliberal but also anti-capitalist, and in favor of “21st-century socialism.” Correa spoke of ending “the dark night of neoliberalism”; and Evo Morales's proposal to build a "plurinational state." It is clear that this "autonomist trend" was not uniform but rather complex and diverse in each of these countries. 2) The "concertación" trend, a name borrowed from the Chilean process of returning to democracy after the Pinochet dictatorship but debated due to the generalizations derived from it, encompasses processes such as those experienced in Argentina under Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández; Uruguay under Tabaré Vázquez; Paraguay under Fernando Lugo; and, to some extent, Brazil under Lula da Silva. These processes were characterized by alliances between left-wing and center-left sectors and yielded different results in each country. These two trends shaped processes that allowed one to speak, at the time, of a "post-neoliberal illusion." 3) In contrast to these attempts at rupture, a trend of "neoliberal continuities" persisted, encompassing Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Honduras, and Costa Rica, also with distinct results and nuances. As in the previous cases, this trend is also not homogeneous. The trends in these scenarios include processes such as those in Venezuela with Nicolás Maduro; Brazil with Dilma Rousseff and the far-right Bolsonaro; Argentina with Cristina Fernández, the return of neoliberalism in Argentina with Mauricio Macri, the interregnum of Alberto Fernández and the far-right Milei; Uruguay with Pepe Mujica and the return of the right; to mention a few, within the global framework marked by the return of Donald Trump to the US government, topics that will be addressed in synchronous session No. 12.

CLASS 11: Educational policies of neoliberal ruptures and models of concertation for the region

Teacher: Sofia Thisted

Conceptual summary of the class

Concertation models emerged in Latin America as an expression of the rise to state control by center-left coalitions, long matured in the resistance struggles waged by alternative democratic parties and social movements against brutal dictatorships and the harsh effects of neoliberalism on the poorest communities. Some of these initiatives advanced educational proposals that sought to expand rights, while others maintained continuity with neoliberal policies in this area of ​​public policy. Examples include Chile between 1988 and 2010, Brazil during the Lula and Dilma governments, Argentina between 2003 and 2015 and between 2019 and 2023, and Uruguay between 2005 and 2019. In education, these initiatives varied in scope, encountering both support and resistance; some endured after changes of direction, while others failed to consolidate. These initiatives were not isolated from globally structured agendas and acquired their own characteristics in each national and jurisdictional context. This class focuses on analyzing how democratization processes take diverse paths, which can be traced through the meanings that education assumes as a right. We will examine how governments that identify as progressive address the violation of this right and what strategies they have developed to make it effective. We will examine policies that have sought to mitigate socioeconomic inequalities and recognize sociocultural, gender, and generational differences, promoting access, retention, and graduation in various educational settings, as well as curricular definitions that attempt to broaden the prevailing ethnocentric perspectives in the region. We will map these trends and their advances and setbacks over the last few decades.

CLASS 12: Educational policies of neoliberal continuities and the drifts of the projects of concertation and rupture for the region

Teachers: Sofía Thisted and Orlando Pulido Chaves

Conceptual summary of the class

In some countries, neoliberal policies remained dominant. These countries prioritized a market-driven approach to education, prioritizing an instrumental view of education over macroeconomic growth and fiscal adjustment policies. This group includes, with some variations, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Argentina (following Mauricio Macri's victory), and Chile, particularly during Sebastián Piñera's presidency. In these countries, with right-wing and center-right political regimes, neoliberal educational reforms prevailed, advocating for improved educational quality as a prerequisite for growth and increased productivity. It fosters a progressive strengthening of privatization and semi-privatization trends that, in some cases, claim to defend the right to education as their rhetoric, while simultaneously defunding public education, strengthening outsourcing of educational services, consolidating "business education" models, and advancing radical reforms to establish administrative and managerial management models for educational systems and institutions, based on optimizing the cost-benefit ratio. This trend has even abandoned the principles of liberal education that championed universality, free access, compulsory education, and secularism. 

The most significant shifts compared to the scenarios described in previous sessions include processes such as those in Venezuela with Nicolás Maduro and his kidnapping by Donald Trump, which has changed the entire global landscape and affected the immediate situation in countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba; Brazil with Dilma Rousseff, the far-right Bolsonaro, and the return of Lula da Silva; Argentina with Cristina Fernández, the neoliberal return with Mauricio Macri, the interregnum of Alberto Fernández, and the far-right Milei; Uruguay with Pepe Mujica, the return of the right with Luis Lacalle Pou, and the new Broad Front government with Yamandú Orsi; Chile with the victory of Gabriel Boric and the return of the far-right with José Antonio Kast; to mention a few, within the global framework marked by the return of Donald Trump to the US government.

The main tension is concentrated on the strengthening of what have been called the "new right" or "far right," linked to what has also been proposed to be called "digital capitalism," which in the educational field is related to the "platformization of education," virtualization, Artificial Intelligence and the impact of algorithms, which have deepened and generated new variants of endogenous and exogenous privatization.

CLASS 13: Pedagogical movements in Latin America and the struggles for the right to education: historical experiences and projections. 20th and 21st centuries.

Teacher: Leonora Reyes

Conceptual summary of the class

The class explores the possibilities of understanding and studying the resistance developed by social and teachers' movements in Latin America against the subsidiary state model and their struggles for the right to education from the perspective of the pedagogical movement. The aim is to spark questions about the experiences of influence on the definition of subject, society, and educational model, and their potential contribution to the foundational principles of a new constitutional charter that proposes structural transformations in the regulation of the right to education. The class is divided into three parts. The first offers an evaluative analysis of the limits and scope of some historical experiences of the pedagogical movement in Latin America. As a concrete example, the course examines the Chilean experience, specifically the configuration of the right to education under the subsidiary state system established by the dictatorship in 1980 and its proposed redefinition of the right to education in the 2022 constitutional proposal. The second section addresses key concepts for deepening the reflection on the history and future of resistance movements and transformative proposals, focusing on the "state-community public education" model. This model gives the State a preferential role in regulating public education, strengthening its growth and democratization through the participation of communities, organizations, and teachers' unions. The third and final section proposes a collective reflection based on the experiences of the students in the course, regarding their own perceptions of the possibilities for transforming educational models from the territories, organizations, or unions they inhabit and participate in. The class proposes a narrative exercise about a lived experience that can then be discussed collectively. The aim is to foster a profound and collaborative reflection.

CLASS 14: Trade union resistance networks against the dismantling of a right. The proposal of the Latin American Pedagogical Movement.

Teacher: Leonora Reyes

Conceptual summary of the class

Four decades of neoliberal models have instilled a neoliberal concept of education workers, viewing them as mere implementers of educational policies and “products” designed by the World Bank, transnational technology corporations, international right-wing think tanks, and even religious groups. In response to this model, education unions have taken on the task of strengthening their capacity to propose solutions by launching the Latin American Pedagogical Movement (MPL), promoted by Education International for Latin America. The MPL considers education workers to be active participants in the educational process and that their daily work in the classroom and in their interactions with students allows them to generate extensive knowledge about the pedagogical process. It is this knowledge, born from classroom experience, that should guide educational policies in the region, not the experiments of international financial institutions or their think tanks. This presentation will outline the MPL's strategy for action and mobilization, in which union organizations develop educational policy proposals with a Latin American perspective, built from the classroom through collaborative pedagogical processes. The MPL organizes working groups in educational institutions, neighborhoods and communities, regions or provinces, and at the national and regional levels. In these spaces, joint proposals with a Latin American perspective have been developed to transform the concept of educational quality, to rethink teacher training in terms of the sovereignty of the people, and to protect academic freedom as a form of resistance to standardized curricula. The labor movement has a privileged position to reclaim the knowledge of its members, who generate pedagogical knowledge every day in the classroom. This class aims to connect research with action in defense of public education as a social right, using the MPL's case as a starting point.

CLASS 15: A pedagogical movement for a new public education with a Latin American perspective: association, resistance and proposals.

Teacher: Special Guests of the MPL

Conceptual summary of the class

The Latin American Pedagogical Movement conceives of teaching practice as a contested exercise, embedded within the framework of educational policy, which is itself in constant conflict. Neoliberalism, in this context, contributes to the deprofessionalization of teachers, reducing educational work to technical tasks that can be performed by anyone, regardless of their training. Thus, the figure of the teacher is reconfigured, no longer as an active participant in the educational process, but as a mere implementer of policies imposed by those in power. This process goes hand in hand with a series of reforms that cut staff, impose pre-established curricula and content, and establish uniform evaluation systems that dehumanize and depoliticize educational practice. 

Class 15 will offer an opportunity to interact with a panel of actors involved in situated experiences that demonstrate anti-neoliberal, decolonial, and resistance-based pedagogical approaches. In this class, we propose a review of the struggles for the right to education explored in previous classes, based on the perspectives of resistance that have been developing within the framework of the political and pedagogical work of teachers' unions in Latin America. We will organize a panel discussion to help update current struggles, contextualize them historically, consider their nuances in different countries of the region, and reflect on future challenges.

You must be registered in the CLACSO Single Registration System (SUIC) and enter your username and password. If you are not registered, click here . To access the registration form, click the "Register" button on the webpage of the Diploma program you are interested in.

Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.

Classes will begin in September and will conclude in December 2026.

All registered participants will receive on the first day of activities the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.

Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available. For inquiries, you can write to [email protected]

You must send an email with the request to [email protected] and we will send you the requested certificate as soon as possible.

Exceptional Criteria: In exceptional cases, and within the first 20 days of the start of the Advanced Diploma program, students may write to [email protected] requesting to withdraw and stating the reasons. After evaluation of the case, a response will be sent to the request. If approved, the student may resume the Advanced Diploma program if a new cohort is offered the following year. After this period has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.

Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity. 

Yes, the advanced diploma is certified by CLACSO. The diploma will be sent digitally and is completely free of charge.

Payment can be made in one installment, by credit card or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.

Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.

You can check if you belong to a member center here: 

https://www.clacso.org/institucional/centros-asociados/

The Advanced Diploma program integrates a dynamic of asynchronous and synchronous classes. Classes are primarily asynchronous. The schedule for synchronous sessions will be communicated by the Diploma coordinator at the beginning of the program, and participation in these sessions is not a prerequisite for passing the program.