Pedagogical Capacity-building, Territory-based Learning Continuity, and Plurinational Equity Across Three Andean Republics

Do culturally responsive educator-preparation programmes for teachers ‘count’ in increasing student persistence in primary schooling? This question is explored using late 2010s and early 2020s data from three Andean contexts and three levels of geographical analysis (national, municipality and student). We use data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank databases. We apply a combination of interrupted time-series models, multilevel models and cross-national variance models to address the research questions. Temporal estimates provide evidence of a significant policy-related shift in persistence in only one of the three cases. Municipality-level models show strong, positive and meaningful associations between participation in administered educator-preparation programmes (our proxy for the policy) and persistence for all student populations in all three contexts. Student-level models reveal that material deprivation and school infrastructure are stronger predictors of persistence than the policy proxy, indicating that educators-preparation initiatives operate within territorially bounded contours, and are not in isolation from other school-level initiatives and circumstances. While we are able to draw some general conclusions about persistence across the three contexts, the uneven quality of the data in impoverished contexts complicates the quality of within-population inferences. Based on limited evidence, there appears to be a positive relationship between policy indecision and growth. As with much else, institutions, data and inequality may play a role.