School site leadership has commanded the attention of researchers and policymakers in Anglo-American jurisdictions for at least two decades, but little is known about how many other parts of the globe have addressed this topic. This paper reviews published research and policy documents related to school leadership in Latin America between 2000–2016. Applying rapid mapping techniques used for scoping studies, we review 359 research and policy documents and give ‘coherent, meaningful shape’ to what we know and what we don’t know about school leadership in the region. Attention in research and policy to school leadership in Latin America was relatively slow to arrive: whilst it grew steadily in the first decade of this century it remains low compared to other regions of the world. We provide an overview of the school leadership policy environment in several countries, describing recruitment, selection, evaluation, and job responsibilities of principals; relevant leadership frameworks; and requirements for training or professional development. We speculate on what might explain the diverse ways that school leadership has been taken up in the region: degree of school system centralization; policy borrowing; stage of development; technocratic problem solving; and neoliberal accountability.
This article will be of interest to anyone wishing to conduct research related to citizenship education in Latin America. It shares the results of a systematic review of empirical studies with the goal of (a) mapping the current research on citizenship education in Latin America and (b) suggesting a research agenda for citizenship education in Latin America. One particular contribution of this article is that it describes research that was previously accessible only to those who read Spanish. Findings include an increase in publications on citizenship education in Latin America since 2000 and show that research is being published on (1) the content of official documents, (2) what happens in educational settings, (3) teachers’ views, (4) students’ views, (5) what influences students’ civic outcomes and (6) students’ civic identities. The final section of the article explores various suggestions for future research.
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