 n March 2005, a five-day seminar, “Quality and Equity in Education Reform,” was offered to alumni of the Fulbright Faculty Development Program actively involved in the education sectors of their home countries. The seminar, which took place on the Harvard University campus, featured lectures, case studies, participant panels, and group activities to assess efforts to bring about educational reforms dedicated to improving quality, while simultaneously addressing equity issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. Topics of discussion included policymaking, minority access to education, institutional change, and the role of the private sector.
The seminar was attended by twenty Fulbright alumni from fifteen countries. The participants hold positions of responsibility in government ministries, serve in the administrations and on the faculties of leading universities, and work in private sector education NGOs, at research centers, and as policy consultants.
The event was sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State and designed and implemented by LASPAU. The presenters included faculty from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Noel McGinn, Fernando Reimers, Thomas Cassidy, Haiyan Hua, and James Honan) and education leaders from Bolivia (Manuel Contreras), Brazil (Claudio de Moura Castro), Chile (Ernesto Schieffelbein and Andrés Bernasconi), Guatemala (Guillermina Herrera), and Mexico (Sylvia Ortega).
In a series of panel discussions over the course of the workshop, the participants gave formal presentations on their education reform efforts in their host countries. The seminar was closed by Professor Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who spoke on “The Future of Higher Education: Global Futures and Implications for Latin America.”
One of the participants commented, “The seminar has been an excellent opportunity to grow academically. I have been able to deepen my reflection on many issues and have new concerns about other issues. I will try to create an evaluation system in my university—there was an affirmation that even though it seems simple, it is very important. We have several ways of evaluating but not with a systemic, integrated view. We will probably need help in this task, but another plus of the seminar is meeting people who could contribute to accomplishing this kind of task.”
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