The Importance of Negotiation for Policy Dialogue: Latin American Training Experiences

Over the past several decades, Latin American countries have supported processes of bringing public policy decisions on education closer to the people concerned. Participation at all levels of decision-making processes has generally been highly valued. Nonetheless, these decentralization efforts came about without governments taking the necessary steps to prepare educational policy-makers to face this enormous challenge. In the context of the "Programa de Actualizacion de Formadores en Gestion y Politica Educativa" (Refresher Course for Educational Policy and Administration Instructors), the regional office of the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP/UNESCO) in Buenos Aires finds that those "missing steps" include adequate training in the concept of competencies. Such training allows policy-makers to interact more effectively with increasing numbers of stakeholders. One of the identified competencies is negotiation. The first section of this article explains the reasons why IIEP/UNESCO-Buenos Aires took this direction. The second section addresses the theoretical and pedagogical approaches in the new and fast-growing field of conflict management in general, and negotiation in particular. The final section "tells the story" of the context and pedagogical scheme of the negotiation module produced within the framework of the IIEP/UNESCO-Buenos Aires project, and developed and tested in the "Programa de Formacion en Educacion Intercultural Bilingue para los paises andinos" (Andean Countries' Programme for Bilingual Intercultural Education) (PROEIB-Andes), in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the University of Panama, Panama City, respectively. Teaching and learning experiences from both processes definitely shed light on the practice and theoretical underpinnings of this promising field of negotiation and consensus building in the public sphere. (Contains 11 notes.)