Ideologies underlying the 2014 chilean english teacher training standards

Abstract

The following thesis reports on a qualitative study of the Estándares Orientadores para Carreras de Pedagogía en Inglés by MINEDUC (2014). Since there are values associated with standards, the creation and application of them entail an ideology that reflects a particular shared vision. Then, the goal of this study is to identify these values in order to understand the ideologies behind the standards for teacher training in Chile, by means of characterising (a) their structure, (b) their content and (c) their social function. The Estándares Orientadores para Carreras de Pedagogía en Inglés consists of 10 standards which state the necessary skills and knowledge an early English teacher should have. These standards were analysed by assigning codes to their content in order to observe general ideas that could be interpreted as ideologies. These ideologies were categorised into three domains: structure, where standards are constructed as principles, declarations and illustrations; content, where it is explained that teachers of English should know, apply, and value their knowledge and abilities; and social function where standards seem to be created as a set of curriculum features, and not as mere guides. Ideologies identified were interpreted also in the light of an interview conducted to the head of standard design team. The ideologies identified in this study are relevant to the discussion of current English teacher training processes in Chile, and the impact that public policies have on the teaching of English in the country.