Abstract

The presentation is based on the author’s doctoral thesis, submitted successfully in 2014 to the University of Oxford. This work studied assessment reforms in Chile from a (poly)systemic, historical and ideological perspective. In this presentation findings around the connections between assessment policies and specific models of education and society are addressed, along with high-stakes assessment systems as a historical barrier for curriculum and pedagogical change. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, intertextuality and polysystems theory applied to documents and interviews with teachers and policymakers, the study argues there is a historical pattern where more egalitarian and emancipatory ideas introduced by different actors in different periods have failed in their attempt of becoming hegemonic due to high-stakes assessment technologies that orient the system towards a functional, success-centred and mechanistic idea of education and society. Lessons from the past for current action at a national and international level will be proposed.