Chilean School facades: Aesthetic matrixes, educational insights

Autores: Luis Hernán Errázuriz, Guillermo Marini.  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, ChileFor the past two decades, Chile has been focusing a significant amount of economic and human resources on the improvement of its educational system. For example: the school day was extended; primary and secondary curricula are regularly reviewed and updated; students are subject to national standardized tests; and a vast teacher education reform is underway which will include mandatory periodic certification of pedagogic and disciplinary knowledge.

Whereas these initiatives have granted a slow but sustained improvement in comparative international tests like PISA1 and TIMSS,2 there are some domains of Chilean education that remain neglected. In particular, the relationship between everyday aesthetics and education is barely considered. This relationship is significant because it would enrich the meaning of ‘quality’ in education by raising the issue of how everyday aesthetic choices, practices and orientations may ‘influence, and sometimes determine, our attitudes and actions’ (Saito, 2007: 55). From this perspective, the way in which the school environment is designed and perceived (its forms, spaces, materiality, colours, visual images, objects) is linked with key educational aspects such as school climate, sense of belonging, institutional aims and the community’s ethos, amongst other considerations.