This document constitutes an information guide and an attempt to compile and synthesize what is relevant to the development of the Regional System for the Evaluation and Development of Citizenship Competences-SREDECC. Six countries of the region take part in the project: Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic. The purpose of the document is to present the general information of the System, to attain a general understanding of its scope and to provide institutions and Experts interested in its development with a basic information brief.
1. Background.
As a result of the meeting of Ministers of Education of the Continent carried out in Trinidad and Tobago in 2005, the Ministers from Mexico, Chile and Colombia decided to propose a regional project that would allow the fostering of educational policies, programs and practices in the countries of the region. Considering this decision, and in the framework of the initiative for the promotion of Regional Public Property-RPP, a project with non-reimbursable financing was presented to the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB, for the production of RPP that would arise from the countries’ collective action, and whose benefits would be public and regional.
2. What is SREDECC?
It is a joint project of six countries in the region with 50% financing from IDB, whose purpose is to create a Regional System that favors the development of educational policies, programs and practices appropriate to the reality of Latin America and of each of the participant countries. The goal of this project is to contribute to the building of a democratic citizenship in the member countries of the System through the strengthening of the education for citizenship and democracy.
The regional public property that will be created through this project consists in a Regional System for the Evaluation and Development of Citizenship Competences which, through regional and world references, will allow the participant countries to attain three great benefits which constitute the components of the project:
- To establish a common regional referent about the minimum competences that the Latin American citizen should have;
- To develop an evaluation system that allows us to analyze and compare the state and the progress of citizenship education in the region and in relation to the rest of the world; and
- To agree upon the basic criteria for an effective citizenship education and the greatest impact educational programs that lead to the strengthening of citizenship education in the participating countries.
3. The Three Components Of The Project
Component 1:
Established regional referential framework of citizenship competences
| Products |
Description |
| 1. National Referents |
Based on the information gathered by the national advisors elected by the Ministry of Education of each country about citizenship competences and the contents and methodologies of the teaching of citizenship education in the participant countries. Each country will have a referent document about citizenship competences. |
| 2. Regional Referent |
This document compiles and systematizes the information and presents its regional scope on the contents of the area, the different citizenship competences and the role of educational practices in its real implementation. This implies the articulation of all the information in a document that acts as a referent for the region which takes into account the similarities and differences among the participating countries and promotes the interchange of experiences and information. |
| 3. Regional Forums |
Carrying out regional forums with the participation of experts in development and/or evaluation of citizenship education, actors of the educational system and of civil society, with the purpose of presenting and validating the System outcomes, generating a wide discussion among experts, and establishing a knowledge network related to citizenship education. |
Component 2:
Citizenship competences and designed and evaluated associated factors
The objective of this component is that the countries develop a joint regional evaluation module based on the common citizenship competences most relevant for the whole region and appropriate to an international test specialized in citizenship competences. To attain this purpose, the project has counted with advising from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), organization of world extent and great experience in global scope evaluation, responsible for the second phase of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS).
In addition to including the 6 countries in the international evaluation carried out in over 40 countries, the IEA has accepted to develop a Latin American regional module for the ICCS test whose construction was the responsibility of the SREDECC and IEA technical coordinators’ team. The application of the Latin American regional module as an integral part of the ICCS in the SREDECC countries will constitute a base line of citizenship competences that will allow the countries of the region to carry out subsequent evaluations and jointly improve the citizenship education policies and practices. The application of the ICCS test in schools selected according to criteria that will be established by the IEA, assures the highest measuring standards and the learning of an evaluation methodology in the region. The IEA will train national technicians in all of the aspects related to the design, application and processing of the test, which will give sustainability to the process of evaluation and development of citizenship education.
The IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement)
is an independent private institution that gathers together public and private agencies at international level with the purpose of finding better instruments for the evaluation of educational Systems in the member countries. It is an institution created in 1958 with a high prestige at world level, which provides very high quality data through the application of instruments that permit the identification of the action areas where adjustments and reforms should be carried out, thus improving the capacity of each country for this purpose and contributing to the creation of a community specialized in education evaluation.
The international coordination of the test is under the responsibility of three organizations: The Australian Council for Education Research-ACER, the National Foundation for Education Research-NFER in England, and the Laboratorio di Pedagogia Sperimentale-LPS of the University of Rome in Italy.
All the information about IEA and the ICCS test can be found in the following Web sites: www.iea.nl, which contains the information related to the Association; http://iccs.acer.edu.au/, which contains all the information about the ICCS test; http://www.wam.umd.edu/, which contains all the information about the Civic Education Study carried out in 1.999.
The activities of this component are:
| Products |
Description |
| 1. Regional Module |
Design of the regional module based on the Latin American referent about citizenship competences or the advances that have been made until the moment of definition of the regional module. |
| 2. Test Application |
Application of the international citizenship education test (ICCS) – including the regional module – in each country with the purpose of evaluating the citizenship competences of students, teachers and schools in the region. |
| 3. Results Processing |
This activity contains all the processing and analysis of the results obtained from the application of the test. |
| 4. National Reports and Regional Report |
Elaboration of national reports and a comparative regional report about citizenship competences and their associated factors. |
| 4. Dissemination of Results |
Dissemination of results through the web page. |
| 4. Training |
Training of national technicians by the IEA on the evaluation methodology according to this Agency’s hiring terms of reference. |
Component 3:
Implementation of a regional information system about citizenship education
The objective of this component is to facilitate, through the collective action of the participant countries, the development of citizenship education programs that turn to be effective for the transmission of the competences that the ICCS has identified as deficient. This component intends to generate concrete actions by decision makers and/or institutions involved in the development of citizenship education and promote a Regional System that permits to generate knowledge, skills for the evaluation of competences and public discussion about issues related to citizenship.
The activities of this component are:
| Products |
Description |
| 1. Program Evaluation |
Evaluation of citizenship education programs proposed by the countries. |
| 2. Practices Menu |
Elaboration of a menu of pratices agreed on by the participants, from which the countries in the region will be able to select those which turn to be more appropriate to the needs identified by the ICCS test and which permits the comparison and analysis of actions that, once they have been documented, can be consulted by the countries in the region. |
| 3. Virtual Tool |
Creation of a virtual tool for the storage and dissemination of information linked to SREDECC, which will be coordinated by the Latin American Network of Educational Websites (ATN/OC-9252-RG) in the modality of associated strategic partner. |
| 4. Dissemination of Results |
Dissemination of the project outcomes to civic society, universities and research centers, in order to encourage the generation of new knowledge and services related to this issue. It is also expected to sensitize civil society about the results and products generated by the project, with the purpose of increasing social support and promoting public debate about citizenship education. |
4. Executor Organism
The executor organism of the project will be the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean, CERLALC, with headquarters in Colombia. In addition to its administrative functions, CERLALC will contribute counterpart-resources up to US$ 300,000 to support the implementation of the project. As an executor organism, CERLALC will be responsible for the general and administrative implementation of the project, and for this purpose it will create an Executor Unity (EU). CERLALC will hierarchically depend from the Project Executive Secretariat and Directorate. In the same way, in order to facilitate the articulation among the participant countries and organisms, CERLALC will take advantage of its widespread regional presence in all participant countries.
| Responsible for the Executor Unity- CERLALC |
| Isadora De Norden |
Director |
| Address |
Calle 70 No. 9-52 Bogotá Colombia |
| Telephone |
(571) 540 2071 |
| E.mail |
isanorden@cerlalc.org |
| Page |
www.cerlalc.org |
While many of the project activities will be carried out in a decentralized way in the participant countries, the responsibility for the whole financial, administrative and countable management will be the responsibility of the EU. The project coordinator will directly depend from and give account of to the Project Executive Secretariat. He will also be responsible for the technical activities: elaboration of Annual Plans, semiannual, annual and final reports and the technical manuals that might be necessary for the implementation of the project.
| General Project Coordinator |
| Leonardo García Suárez |
|
| Address |
Calle 70 No. 9-52 Bogotá Colombia |
| Telephone |
(571) 5402071 Ext. 225 |
| E.mail |
lgarcia@cable.net.co |
5. Operational Structure
SREDECC will be coordinated by a Directorate, an Executive Secretariat and a Technical Coordination, instances that make up the System’s operational structure. The Directorateis the System’s maximum authority and it is conformed by the Education Ministers of the 6 participant countries. The Executive Secretariat will act as the Directorate’s secretariat and it is the instance that assures the inter-institutional coordination among all the participant countries. It is conformed by the technical delegates of the maximum authorities of the educational sector of three (3) of the participant countries. The Technical Coordination will be conformed by a technical coordinator and an alternating coordinator for each beneficiary country, who will be responsible for the implementation of the project activities in their respective countries. Each one of the national coordinators will act as an operational link between the Executor Unit and the technical-institutional instances in his/her country and will coordinate the implementation of the project in his/her country.
6. Sustainability Of The Initiative
The first phase of the SREDECC project is expected to extend until January of 2011. By this time the project should count with a group of associated countries in addition to the six countries that make up the project at present, as well as with a sustainability plan that permits to give continuity to the initiatives developed along the four initial years. This System is expected to give impulse to a long term and high impact process in the development of policies and practices of citizenship education in the region.
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