Moments to explore
Moment A
Moment B
Podcast I
Moment C
From research
to practice I
Moment D
From research
to practice II
Moment E
Moment F
From research
to practice III
Moment G
Podcast II
Moment H
Moment A
Through this moment, we present a video that summarizes some key findings from a doctoral research endeavor. An endeavor that eventually led to the conceptualization of this post-doctoral research project. The doctoral work was supported by a doctoral scholarship provided by the Vice-Rectory for Research of the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile.
Complete
Work
Literature
Review
Discursive
Análisis
Moment B
Moment A allowed one to see the importance of questioning the rationalities, logics and power plays that are behind the drafting of normative documents. By normative documents, we refer to those documents that attempt to fix certain behaviors and understandings as desired; while, at the same time, fixing other behaviors and understandings as problematic or ill-fated. Examples of these types of documents are public policies, school curricula, and standards. Consequently, this moment of the research endeavor (Moment B) sought to explore the rationalities, logics and power plays that were behind the drafting of normative documents pertaining to Chile’s fifteen State Technical Formation Centers (CFT-E, for their acronym in Spanish) that were created by Law 20.910 of the Ministry of Education of Chile.
Complete
Work
Podcast 1
Moments A and B present multimedia pieces that came to be because of our research efforts. In this audiovisual room we would like to take a step back and ponder on what it means to be a researcher and do research. Here you can listen to a conversation with a researcher with a long and recognized career. The focus of the conversation: What is it to be a researcher and do research? Benjamin Vera and Ignacio Dagach, undergraduate students at the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics of the University of Chile, spoke with Ola Pilerot. Ola is a researcher and full professor at the Swedish School of Library and Information Sciences (SSLIS) at the University of Borås. He has published more than 90 research pieces, including multiple articles in journals indexed in databases such as Web of Science and Scopus. From the conversation we would like to highlight the following exchange: Benjamín: How did you get here, like how did you learn the discipline of doing research? Ola: Well, “how did I learn to do research?”, well, I’m not fully learned yet. I mean, I need to learn constantly.
Moment C
Moments A and B focus on normative documents. Specifically, on the discourses articulated within these documents. What is stated within these documents contributes to the construction of that which we call reality. This moment takes inspiration from the findings of the philosopher Michel Foucault. His work demonstrates that discourses (including those within documents) are not mere statements. Discourses also materialize into practices. For example, in his work on the penal system, Foucault shows how different regulatory frameworks where co-constructed alongside new forms of knowledge and how these curtailed how inmates experienced being inmates. For this reason, discourses are not mere representations of a supposed reality; they actively participate in the creation of realities. Discourses are, therefore, discursive practices. However, the role of discourse in the co-constitution of subjects is not synonymous with determinism. People "can respond from their own subjectivity... [which] opens up possibilities for resistance, where they can strive to exercise a self-definition of their identities and practices" (Oyarzun, 2020, p. 231). Therefore, in this moment (Moment D) we present a study that aims to explore the experiences of teachers in their intertwining with fields of knowledge and power. For this leg of our research journey, methodologically we choose to carry out a post-foundational discourse analysis while adopting a Foucauldian approach to the concept of experience.
Full Book
From research to practice
At this point in our research journey, our results allowed us to think about a pilot workshop. The goal: offer opportunities where teachers could enact digital abilities; and, thus, offer a space to develop and share knowledge. In other words, it was time to move our research findings into practice. For our first pilot workshop, we decided to explore ways in which teachers could enact digital abilities even in the absence of digital technologies. The following research article presents this first pilot experience.
Download the article here
Moment D
So far, the results of our research show that the development of the so-called digital abilities is somewhat adrift. Despite the supposed importance of these skills for today's society, we do not find a clear definition of them in the so far analyzed documents. In most of them, digital abilities are not even defined. When they are, the definition within the Chilean Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system is vague. Therefore, it seems that the development of these abilities is in the hands of everyone and, at the same time, of no one. During our conversations with teachers from one of Chile’s State Technical Formation Centers (CFT-E, for its acronym in Spanish) we have identified a new protagonist: teachers tend to assign responsibility for the development of these abilities to school libraries. However, the question arises: are school libraries the most suitable environment for the development of digital abilities? In the following research article, we address this question.
Article
From research to practice II
Once again, it was time to apply our research to more practical terrains. Six students from the Faculty of Education Sciences, of the University of Talca, participated in the drafting of a teaching brief. After interacting with different academic-scientific articles and books, the six students identified a problem and designed a didactic sequence to address such a problem. In the words of the authors: "The purpose of this teaching brief is to share a pedagogical teaching sequence aimed at dealing with untrustful and fake information on the web" (Bustamante et al., 2024). The workshop was led by Fernando Bolaños Zarate and Miguel Ángel Cerna, who also edited the piece. The complete teaching brief can be read here.
Download the article here
Moment E
So far, our postdoctoral work has shown that the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system has not been exempted from the discursive rhetoric that maintains that being able enact digital abilities is indispensable for today’s supposed society. However, our research has also shown that what these abilities are, how they should be developed and by whom are questions that have not been properly addressed. Accordingly, the development of these so thought indispensable abilities has been left to chance. Within the Chilean context, throughout our postdoctoral research a new actor emerged as being responsible for the development of digital abilities: libraries. More specifically, school, university and TVET libraries. Moment D explored the role of school libraries. We choose to begin with school libraries given that, in Chile, such libraries are normed by a national plan. However, such a national plan does not exist at the university or TVET level. At these levels, each university and TVET library can operate at their own discretion. Furthermore, in Chile, the university and TVET landscape is not only diverse, but extremely heterogeneous. As such, there is no easy point of entry for the exploration of university or TVET libraries. After careful consideration, we decided to begin our exploration into these systems by exploring normative documents that regulate a group of university libraries that belong to universities known, in Chile, as CRUCH Universities. CRUCH stands, in Spanish, for Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities. It is a prestigious group comprised by 30 member universities. Their joint mission is to advise the Chilean Ministry of Education on various issues, giving them significant political influence (cf., Consejo de Rectoras y Rectores de las Universidades Chilenas, 2024). To coordinate their library systems, these universities collaborate through the Permanent Advisory Committee on Libraries and Documentation (CABID, for its acronym in Spanish). This moment presents a first exploration into documents that seek to norm CRUCH university libraries.
Moment F
Our work has shown that teachers, researchers, policy makers and normative documents avow that digital ability development, within the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system, is indispensable. Such an understanding has become an unquestioned truth, it has become a myth. Despite such uncontested importance, or maybe because of it, exploring underlying assumptions of digital ability development has been scantly done within the TVET system. This is not to say that there are no studies that explore underlying assumptions of TVET or digital abilities separately; it is the intersection that has been overlooked. The few studies that we have thus been able to find set their gaze on the Chilean TVET system. Findings from these studies show that failing to question underlying assumptions can lead to discrepancies between rhetoric and practice. Discrepancies where the development of digital abilities is left to chance. Given the importance of exploring such assumptions, and the need to broaden the existing literature to other countries and contexts, in this moment (Moment F) we explored the Ecuadorian TVET system at the intersection with digital ability development. Ecuador was chosen given that it can be a starting point for the drafting of a sort of map for understandings of digital ability development within TVET. While our work has no pretensions of generalization, nor would our methodological approach allow for it, complementing the few studies that explore underlying assumptions can provide valuable insights. As was argued, the few studies that we have been able to find that explore the intersection digital ability development and TVET focus on Chile. Such a system is characterized as being framed under a capitalist and neoliberal understanding of schooling. One where monetary income does determine access to schooling options and where profiting by means of Milton Friedman’s school voucher principles is an engrained part of its conception. Such a characteristic, it would seem, lies in stark contrast to the way education is framed in Ecuador. Ecuador’s system is normed by its Organic Intercultural Education Law. Within such a law, it is explicitly stated that it is prohibited to ask any form of fees and that everyone shall have the same opportunities of access independently of monetary conditions. Given such an apparent stark contrast, analyzing the Ecuadorian system would be interesting and of value.
From practice
to research III
Publishing research findings in indexed and peer-reviewed journals has multiple benefits. However, it can also generate barriers in access to knowledge. For example, sometimes the language used in indexed journals is technical, in addition to the fact that the texts may be written in a language that is foreign to potential readers (e.g., written in English for a population that primarily speaks Spanish). Therefore, in this moment, we decided to translate the findings of one of the research articles that was published within the framework of this postdoctoral research project: the one that explored the role of CRA School Libraries (Moment D). The translation was done through the writing of an amphibious chronicle (i.e., journalistic-academic chronicle). Written with the pen of the journalist Javiera Márquez Basualto, and with the guidance of Elías Farid Camhaji Mascorro (winner of the National Journalism Award of Mexico, 2021), this amphibious chronicle details the work of a CRA librarian: Yudith Merino González.
Chronicle
Moment G
A constant throughout this project, and the texts that have been written, has been the analysis of documents. But, how can we question documents? Well, there are several ways. In this video, this question is addressed. This video was financed by Diana Pérez Chanona, who lends her voice to our owl.
Podcast 2
In the first podcast of this postdoctoral research project (Podcast I), two students enrolled in the undergraduate degree in education at the University of Talca conversed with Ola Pilerot; an academic from the Swedish School of Library and Information Sciences (SSLIS). The guiding question of that first podcast was: What does it mean to be a researcher and do research? For our second podcast, we address the same question, but from a different perspective. For this instance, two students enrolled in the undergraduate degree in education at the Universidad de los Andes Chile conversed with professor Federico Castillo, an academic from the Faculty of Mathematics of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. We would like to highlight the following quote from Federico: "If one expands one’s mind about what it means to investigate and to be a researcher, whoever likes it can ants it can become a researcher."
Moment H
The starting point of this postdoctoral research project was the doctoral work carried out by Bolaños (2017-2021). Three years after that departure, this postdoctoral work has come to an end (2022-2025). What we have presented on this website is only a fraction of the efforts that were made. Other key moments that are not featured here include workshops, seminars, conferences, research visits, countless meetings, and many, many other activities. When we started our work, in one of Chile’s CFT-E (Moment B), there was no way to anticipate that we would end up in school, university and TVET libraries. There was no way to anticipate that we would end up collaborating with researchers, librarians, teachers, and public policy makers. There was no way to foresee that we would collaborate not only with a very diverse group of people from different disciplinary fields (including, but not limited to, library and information science, mathematical modeling, biology, ecology, and pedagogy) but also from different corners of the world (Chile, Ecuador, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the United States of America). If we had to say something about our postdoctoral journey, we would have to quote Koro-Ljungberg (2015, pp. 18-19): “research and findings can be more about meaning-making process than outcomes, more about questions than answers, more about connecting and living than arriving, and more about exploration than delivery” (Koro-Ljungberg, 2015, pp. 18-19). So where to end our journey? Truly, any place is as good as another. That said, we have chosen as our last moment an exploration of the underlying logics and rationalities of a teacher professional development program known as aRPa. We have chosen aRPa because its members have been a constant presence in this postdoctoral project. Always willing to contribute with ideas, concerns, questions and proposals. aRPa is a teacher professional development program of the University of Chile, the result of the collaboration between the Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE) and the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the same university. The members of aRPa have provided invaluable support to the members of this postdoctoral research project, and we are deeply grateful to them.
