Educational Markets and Segregation: Global Trends and Singular Experiences from Belgium and Chile

This edited volume highlights the deep issues of the educational markets and school segregation from its origins to its effects. The book discusses both global trends as well as focalized examples. It’s based on a comprehensive review of existing literature and an in-depth analysis of two educational systems: The French-speaking community in Belgium and Chile. Both contexts are characterized by a high degree of segregation, a structural environment of free choice of schools and competition between public and private schools financed with public resources. 

This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of scientific knowledge on the issue of segregation and rigorous analyses of recent policies aimed at reducing segregation in educational systems. It highlights the complexity of a process of change, the importance of its legitimacy among the population and the need of identifying the ethical and social justice issues surrounding school segregation. By providing a solid theoretical and empirical synthesis, this book is a great resource to students, researchers and academics in education, as well as social scientists and policy-makers.

Vincent Dupriez is professor of education at the University of Louvain. He develops research on educational policies and organizations. His recent work focuses on the regulation in education systems and the evolution of the teaching profession, exposed to new modes of governance. Vincent Dupriez was President of the GIRSEF research center from 2010 to 2017. In 2008, he was selected as George Bereday Award recipient for the best article in Comparative Education Review.

Juan Pablo Valenzuela, is Professor at the Universidad de Chile, main researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Education (IE) and at the Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE), and teaches in the Economic Department from the same university. He has a Master and PhD degrees in Economics, from the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor. He has published several researches about school improvement on primary and secondary education, evaluation of public policies on the field, segregation, public education reforms, and schooling leadership. 

Marie Verhoeven is a full time professor at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and a senior researcher at GIRSEF. She has been (co-)director of GIRSEF since 2019-2020. Grounded in the field of sociology of education, her research interests focus on the transformations of socialization and educational policies in “late modernity”. Specialized in qualitative (comprehensive) methods, she particularly examines social and ethnic segregation processes, educational policies (and new professions) related to prevention of  violence and drop-out, and multicultural and inclusion educational policies, examining the interplay between macro (international discourses and policies), meso (school market, school-level organization) and micro (careers and identities) levels. She also has a particular interest in social justice theories in education.

Javier Corvalán, is Professor at the Faculty of Education of University Alberto Hurtado. He has a PhD degree in sociology from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). He teaches sociology of education and his main fields of research are educational policies and equity and politics and history of education. He has published several researches about school choice, intercultural education and educational quasi markets in Chile.