Three Cities, Three Days: Faculty Members Spread the Word on Literacy in Chile

Lecturer Barbara Alexander Pan and Professor Catherine Snow visited three Chilean cities in three days recently as part of the International Congress on Education, a language and reading comprehension conference sponsored by Educar Magazine and the educational foundation Los Robles.

The conference attracted over 1,000 educators  to sessions held on January 9–12 in the cities of Concepión, Santiago, and Antofagasta. Each day Pan and Snow gave lectures and taught a short course to educate Chilean teachers and administrators about the importance of language development and reading comprehension. The conference also provided an opportunity for them to catch up with many of their former students.

"The Ed School was well represented," Pan said. Two-thirds of the conference speakers were HGSE alums including Boston College Assistant Professor Patrick Proctor, Ed.D.'05; Silvia Romero-Contreras, Ed.M.'03, Ed.D.'06, a faculty member at the University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico; HGSE Postdoctoral Fellow Paola Uccelli, Ed.M.'93, Ed.D.03; and Andrea Rolla San Francisco, Ed.M.'01, Ed.D.'06, who lives and works in Santiago. "It was nice to see grads [attend the conference who are] spread out all over, but who are still focused on the same compelling issues," Pan said.

Among the issues highlighted during the conference were the role of media in literacy instruction, ways of teaching reading comprehension, contributions of the family to language and literacy development, and methods for promoting family involvement in students' school achievement.

Pan spoke about how parents and teachers can develop strategies for engaging young children in reading. In particular, Pan said she was impressed with Chilean educators' motivation and their overwhelming interest in preschool education. "They are poised to take a great leap forward in this area and that was very exciting," Pan said.

Despite Chile's commitment to reading there are many challenges to overcome. For instance, there are few books for children. "Even people who are highly educated and well off have a hard time getting children's books," Pan said, citing low production and the high cost of books in the country. Pan offered educators suggestions for those unable to purchase actual children's books, such as encouraging families to make their own books, using wordless books, and even using photo albums.

In addition to participating in the Educar conferences, while in Santiago Pan and Snow gave workshops for attendees from the Chilean Ministry of Education. Also, Snow participated in a number of preparatory meetings for a large-scale preschool quality intervention and evaluation that will be undertaken in Chile under the direction of Rolla San Francisco, with support from a Harvard consultative group being directed by Snow and HGSE Professor Hiro Yoshikawa.

With the recent election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile, the government's interest in expanding early childhood education and in raising Chilean students' test scores has risen.  Snow noted that this seems like a very promising moment for improving the quality of early childhood education in Chile. Fortunately, Chilean educators are partnering with Harvard researchers to design high quality, language-focused early childhood education and to evaluate its effectiveness.