Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean examines the development and practice of education in México, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panamá. The chapters, written by local experts, provide an overview of the structure, aims and purposes of education in each of these ten countries with very different socio-economic backgrounds. The authors present curriculum standards, pedagogy, evaluation, accountability and delivery, discussing both how the formal systems are structured and how they actually function. The volume explores the origins of proposed reforms and their implementation, emphasising the distinctiveness of each country and attempting to locate new practices that could lead to better education.

Including a comparative introduction to the issues facing education in the region as a whole and guides to available online datasets, this book is an essential reference for researchers, scholars, international agencies and policy-makers.

C. M. Posner is Visiting Professor at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK. He was founding Director of the Instituto de Investigación Educativa y Desarrollo de Nayarit and Professor at the The Metropolitan Autonomous University, México, OECD consultant and Advisor to Ministry of Education, México. He is co-author, with David Scott, Christopher Martin and Elsa Guzmán, of Interventions in Education Systems (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Christopher Martin is Visiting Fellow at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK. He is also a consultant on education reform programmes for the Ministry of Education, Mexico, and Associate Fellow of the Virtual University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He is co-author, with David Scott, Charles Posner and Elsa Guzmán, of Interventions in Education Systems (Bloomsbury, 2014)

Ana Patricia Elvir is a co-founder and Senior Researcher at the Center for Educational Research and Social Action (CIASES), Nicaragua. She holds a Doctorate in Education from Harvard University, USA, and has over 20 years of experience in the field of education and international relations. Her research interests lie in teacher development and early childhood education.