The Education as a social right: The construction of a policyframe by the Chilean student movement

Abstract

This article discusses the factors that explain the 2006 high schools and 2011 university student protests, which were the largest in Chile since the end of military dictatorship. Both were part of the same process of public demand that originated a new vision of a Chilean social economic model particularly in education. The high school students protest was the first social expression against neoliberalism. The university student strategy was to gain the support of civil society after the disappointment produced by the loss of trust between government and student. The analysis performed by the authors is based on the referencial concept, which is a cognitive and normative policyframe, that was used by the students to produce a vision of an unfair development model. The Bachelet’s second government illustrates the impact of this policyframe mobilized by the students.