Quality of education: between exclusion and utopia

Abstract

Education Quality is a topic to which factors of different nature (social, economic, political, cultural, among others) are associated. It is thus frequent to find diverse points of view about education quality in the forms of research reports, papers, articles and academic discourses. This is an evidence on the great concern and tension this discussion creates. Given the great variety of associated factors to education quality, this paper searches these in four discourses, being the basic one the World Bank discourse entitled La calidad de la educación en Colombia: Un análisis y algunas opciones para un programa de política (2009). There are three other discourses that question the pertinence of thinking education quality only in terms of measurement. These are: “Diez factores para una educación de calidad para todos en el siglo XXI” (2006), by the scholar Cecilia Braslavsky, “Calidad educativa: más que resultados en pruebas estandarizadas” (2004), by professor Ricardo L. Gómez and “¿Por qué las pruebas estandarizadas no miden la calidad educativa?” (1999), by Northamerican researcher James Popham. The analysis is held under three categories: context, the expressions with specific meaning for the context, and the vocabulary used.

The analysis allows to conclude that the World Bank uses a selective and exclusive terminology, and equivalence series to equate education quality to students’ learning, while Braslavsky has a proactive, ample and optimistic intention. On the other hand, Gomez’ discourse may be characterized by a mild resistance. Finally, Popham assumes an ironic

and radical resistance posture by the means of the constant use of figures of speech.