The Influence of Educational Technical Assistance (ATE) on the Improvement of Disadvantaged Schools in Chile: A Case Study. Alvaro González MPhil/PhD in Education Institute of Education, University of London agonzalez01@ioe.ac.uk Abstract In this paper I present a case study where the relationship between a Chilean municipal school and a provider of ‘educational technical assistance’ (ATE) has been explored. Using mixed methods, I studied the relationship between the school staff and external agents during a programme of external support. Four key topics emerged as relevant: (i) the purpose of technical assistance; (ii) the implementation of technical assistance; (iii) the role and relationship with external agents; and (iv) the contribution of technical assistance to the improvement plan. Finally, I identify facilitators and obstacles for initiating a process of school improvement with external support. Keywords Educational technical assistance Disadvantaged schools School improvement External support Background and Literature With the intention of improving the quality and equity conditions in schooling, Chilean governments have placed an emphasis on providing both administrative and pedagogical support to disadvantaged schools in the last two decades (Raczynski and Muñoz, 2007). Particularly, since 2008, the Preferential School Subsidy Act (SEP for its Spanish acronym) allocates extra funding to (state) municipal and (private) subsidised schools catering for disadvantaged children, guided by the principle of positive discrimination to improve disadvantaged schools (Garcia-Huidobro, 1994). Within the framework of SEP, there are four key elements: (i) introduction of schools into a system of classification, incentives and sanctions linked to educational outcomes; (ii) local design of a four-year school improvement plan to achieve specified educational outcomes; (iii) local accountability of results from the school and administrators, towards MINEDUC and the local community; and (iv) pedagogical and administrative support from external agents (ATE) hired by schools or administrators (Contreras and Corbalán, 2010) For implementing this school improvement plan, SEP allows schools and their administrators to invest on material resources, extending teachers’ contract hours, hiring specialists and hiring ‘educational technical assistance’ (ATE) to provide general support to the school. The latter is a major change in the educational policy for school improvement in Chile because it is the first time external support (under the name of ‘technical assistance’) is officially recognised as part of school improvement policy in the country (Muñoz and Vanni, 2008). The technical assistance or ATE is a service of external support provided to schools by advisors or consultants, aiming to initiate or sustain improvement processes through topic-focused and time-specific -but by no means brief- on-site interventions, different from the regular school management activities (Belleï et al., 2010). In the context of SEP, technical assistance has been provided by university-based departments, for-profit private organizations or individuals with particular expertise, duly registered in a national database where schools can access information about them, including evaluations from previous consultancy or advisory work to schools. Given this scenario, some authors claim that SEP has meant a paradigmatic shift in the Chilean education policy (Weinstein et al., 2010), going from centralised programmes of intervention to decentralised strategies of improvement. However, there is not much available evidence on how this process is taking place in schools. There are some recent studies about the quality of the services of technical assistance (Valenzuela, 2011) and the impact of technical assistance in the improvement of schools’ outcomes (Fiabane et al., 2009, Muñoz et al., 2012, Rojas, 2010), but certainly more research is needed. On the other hand, literature on school improvement with external support provides interesting insights for analysing the Chilean experience of technical assistance. International evidence shows the complexity of initiating and sustaining a process of improvement and change in schools facing challenging circumstances (Muijs et al., 2004, Reynolds et al., 2006, Clarke, 2005), as well as the possibilities and pitfalls of school improvement with external support or intervention (Finnigan and O'Day, 2003, Newmann and Sconzert, 2000, Chapman, 2005). Similarly, the literature stresses that external support must develop appropriate interventions, aiming to build internal capacity in schools to promote improvement (Stoll, 2009). Research on school improvement with external support also emphasises the relevance of the role of external change agents supporting schools (Miles et al., 1988). According to Tajik (2008), it is possible to describe three broad roles for external agents involved in school improvement actions: critical friend, technical expert and facilitator. The critical friend will focus on helping teachers to develop reflective skills and will encourage change by questioning assumptions and practices in schools (MacBeath, 1998). The technical expert can be considered as the most common role for external agents in the context of highly standardized and accountability-based interventions, because they are hired by their expertise and are asked to provide a technical solution to the school’s needs (García and Donmoyer, 2005). Finally, the role of facilitator positions the change agent in between teachers, school leaders, parents and administrators, and is neither an authority nor a subordinate, being ‘capable of blending top-down and bottom-up approaches to change’ (Tajik, 2008, p. 256). The role of change agents is subject to the characteristics of the schools they are introduced to, particularly when taking into account the teachers’ culture, style of leadership, the schools’ performance or internal capacity or the history of relationship with external agencies (Chapman, 2005). However, research shows that no matter the role external agents assume, they are critical for building local capacity in schools to develop change and improvement (Hopkins, 2001). Research Rationale and Methodology Considering the issues explained above, particularly the role of external agents and how they are introduced to schools, I wanted to explored the relationship between school staff and external agents to understand how this relationship influenced the process of improvement in a particular school. I considered that a case study was fit for this purpose, because it would allow me to deeply study this phenomena in a particular school in order to understand similar ones (Gerring, 2007). The studied case was a small urban primary municipal school from the V region, receiving support from a university-based provider of ATE through a programme aimed to introduce Assesssment for Learning (AfL) to the school. The programme consisted on theoretical sessions (lectures), practical workshops (developing assessment instruments) and classroom observation (feeding teachers’ practice back). In practical terms, I studied the case with a mixed methods approach (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2008, Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004), applying qualitative methods like semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis; and a questionnaire application as a quantitative method. Moreover, I analysed the data on a two-step process, following a case description as the analytical strategy (Yin, 2003). First, I analysed each data source separately looking for detailed accounts of the technical assistance; and second, I performed an integrated analysis of the information that emerged from the three data sources, identifying four key topics. Research Results As noted above, four topics emerged from the integrated analysis as relevant for understanding how the relationship between external agents and the school’s staff relates to the process of improvement. First, the aim of the technical assistance refers to the nature and purpose of external support as a strategy for school improvement. Participants perceived it as the initiation of a process of improvement through professional development activities, to promote change at classroom and school levels. In this particular case, the school leaders choose to ask the ATE team to support teachers mainly on their professional development. However, I think this could have led to two possible outcomes: either focusing on a short-term, quick-fix view of improvement (Chapman, 2005) improving specific subjects (literacy and mathematics) to achieve the centrally determined standards (SIMCE); or set the basis for building internal capacity for improvement in the school (Stoll, 2009) beyond the centrally determined of standards. Second, the implementation of the technical assistance points to how the external support was delivered to the school. This went from a highly structured work plan to a tailored set of activities, facilitated by external agents’ flexibility and level of expertise. This is an example of how externally imposed change can be adapted and integrated into the school’s political and power structure (Busher, 2001). However, some teachers doubted the expertise and capacity of the junior advisors to help them work out classroom problems, which was often resolved by the intervention of senior advisors. Third, the roles and relationship with external agents proved to be a key element in the experience of external support for the studied school. In the interviews and from the answers to the questionnaire, there is a perception of integrated and mixed roles of external agents as technical experts, facilitators and critical friends (Tajik, 2008). By blending support and challenge, the external agents managed to establish a trustful and collaborative relationship with the school staff. And fourth, the contribution of the technical assistance to the school’s improvement plan refers to what the ATE provided to the school to support their PME. The school staff showed clear ownership over their PME, and considered the ATE as one of many tools that can assist them to achieve things they have not been able to achieve by themselves. Building on this, I recall the notion of boundary spanners (Honig, 2008) or brokers (Supovitz, 2008) to characterise how ATE introduces resources and knowledge to the school to support them in leading their PME. However, from the perspective of the participants, the limited time and resources involved in this experience of external support limited the contribution of the ATE. Senior advisors considered that the disadvantaged context and background of school implied it would continue to need external support to improve. Concluding Thoughts My study shows that the process of external support from ATE to the school is dynamic and includes a variety of negotiation stages between its participants. In particular, the results indicate the presence of facilitators and obstacles for initiating a process of improvement. Evidence suggests that the school’s sense of ownership over their improvement plan, the development of trustful and collaborative relationships between the participants, and the external agents’ flexibility to negotiate strategies with teachers and school leaders were the main facilitators. Conversely, limited time and resources to develop the assistance; the background characteristics of the school; and the external agents’ level of expertise appear as the main obstacles for initiating and sustaining improvement in this experience. The studied case reflects that external support through technical assistance is a complex process where relationships between external agents and school staff are constantly changing. 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