PhD student Cornell University Cornell University Ithaca, New York, United States
Abstract: In 2006, Chilean legislation introduced a new concept for community engagement, Vinculación con el Medio (VM), as part of the National System for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. While in 2006, VM was a voluntary accreditation area, in 2025, it will become a mandatory dimension of institutional accreditation of universities. These regulations have created new institutionalization processes that emphasize accountability, management models, and standardization of community engagement, creating tensions between the state authorities, institutions, and practitioners. In response, a new field of research has emerged. Based on a systematic literature review (in Spanish and English), this presentation focuses on the emergent themes and critical issues in Chile’s academic work on community engagement. It also explores the Chilean case’s specificity, which condensates the Latin American universities’ ethos and neoliberal policies on higher education. This reform is an example of a top-down process and using “authoritative tools” (Farnell, 2020) to promote community engagement. Based on the accountability process, the changes promoted in the reform have two main impacts: 1) tension with the Latin American tradition of community engagement (inspired by Freire and others), and 2) the limitation of the topics discussed by researchers and practitioners. This presentation will contribute to the Conference question How is service learning and community engagement implemented in different communities and parts of the world? As most of the literature is in Spanish, it will also contribute to including the Chilean case in a global debate, mostly dominated by English publications.
Narrative: The conversation on the role of universities in society has been gaining strength in the last decades, hand in hand with changes in higher education systems globally. In Latin America, this debate is not new. Since the Independence wars in the XIX Century, universities were shaped as developmental universities, connected with the mission of building new countries and consolidating new nations (Arocena et al., 2018; Gómez de Mantilla & Figueroa Chaves, 2011; McCowan, 2019). Usually, the terms used in Spanish to refer to this mission are Extensión Universitaria, Proyección Social, Acción Social, Vinculación. These terms originated from university programs in the early 20th Century and were institutionalized in 1949 as a third mission of universities (Tünnermann Bernheim, 1978). This has made community engagement integral part of an ethos of the Latin American university (Cano Menoni, 2017).
Chile introduced a new concept, Vinculación con el Medio (VM), to refer to community engagement practices in higher education. Since 2006, VM has been part of the National System for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, creating new institutionalization processes that are challenging institutions and practitioners. In response, a series of essays and empirical research has been published, leading to the emergence of a new field in Chile dedicated to understanding the complexity and conflicting meaning of community engagement. This presentation focuses on the emergent themes and critical issues in Chile’s academic work on community engagement while describing the specificity of the Chilean case.
Given the abundance of terms, described as “definitional anarchy” (Sandmann, 2008, p. 91), and their polysemy, I will use the word “community engagement” as an umbrella term in this work. I understand community engagement as part of an emerging research field (Fransman, 2018), therefore an object of empirical research, and as a “boundary concept” (Tommasino & Cano, 2016, p. 21) that situates a debate and contestation about the limits of university and non-university actors. This pragmatic approach to the conceptual discussion allows me to concentrate on describing and explaining similar practices that may be named under different terms but are “functionally equivalent” (Dougnac, 2016; Dougnac Quintana, 2018). It will also allow me to be sensitive to how the dispute for community engagement’s meanings unfolds in different contexts and moments.
In this work, I will present the results of a systematic literature review that included 49 articles, book chapters, and manuscripts. Eight articles published before 2009 and one published in 2011 were included to provide context for the contemporary debate. The remaining 40 pieces, published between 2009 and 2023, were divided between 18 essays and 22 empirical research studies.
The presentation is divided into three main sections. First, I summarize the current legal context of Chilean community engagement. I show how the VM concept, which emphasizes bi-directionality (two-way relationship), integrality with teaching and research, and impact evaluation, is generating the first process of national reform in community engagement. While in 2006, VM was a voluntary accreditation area, in 2025, it will become a mandatory dimension of institutional accreditation of universities. These regulations have created new institutionalization processes that emphasize accountability, management models, and standardization of community engagement.
Second, I synthesize the main academic debate in the Chilean literature based on the 18 essays, distinguishing three moments of the debate. The first moment was characterized by a “conceptual coexistence” between 1993 and 2009. The second moment was marked by the “installation of VM” between 2009 and 2016. The third moment, which has persisted until the present day, is defined by the “consolidation of VM and dispute” since 2016. In this third moment, I identified two main branches of academic debate: improvement of VM or critical perspective.
Third, I identify emerging research areas in the 22 empirical research publications, based on their methodology (methods, perspective, data collection techniques, sources) and analytical lenses, using Fransman’s conceptual framework (Fransman, 2018). In sum, the themes of empirical research studies on community engagement in Chile are primarily influenced by National Accreditation Commission’s (CNA) introduction of VM as a concept (bidirectionality and integrality), its connection with the quality assurance system (institutionalization, evaluation, management), and the resistance to some of its assumptions (history and territory). The analytical lenses used align with CNA’s perspective, prioritizing accounts, institutions, and practices while neglecting identities and artifacts, which address the subjectivities of the actors and the connections between society and materiality.
In conclusion, I characterize this process as the first national reform in community engagement in Chile. This reform is an example of a top-down process that uses “authoritative tools” (Farnell, 2020) to promote community engagement. In terms of the academic debate, I identify two main impacts of this reform: 1) tension with the Latin American tradition of community engagement (inspired by Freire and others), and 2) the limitation of the topics discussed by researchers and practitioners. This presentation will contribute to the Conference question How is service learning and community engagement implemented in different communities and parts of the world? As most of the literature is in Spanish, it will also contribute to including the Chilean case in a global debate, mostly dominated by English publications.
Learning objectives: To identify the particular context of Chile and Latin American community engagement tradition. To examine an ongoing national reform based on accountability and accreditation system in Chile. To distinguish the impact of the national reform on how Chilean researchers conduct their research and universities institutionalized the new concept (VM). To explore new dialogues and research opportunities comparing similar systems in other countries.
Keywords: Latin America, accountability, accreditation, university reform
As the material used is secondary data, there are no ethical concerns or negative impacts for any population.
