A parallel study is examining policies that can improve the quality and size of the future teaching force in the region. In both instances, the research focuses on what can be done to improve teacher performance of the current pool of active teachers. As school systems in Latin America continue to evolve, expectations as to the roles fulfilled by schools increase. The development of citizenship has been one of the major roles expected of schools, but a role that has received relatively little attention. New experiments and controlled observation suggest that preaching and sermonizing are essentially useless strategies.
Children learn from the way the school, as a social institution, behaves.
Ethics, by extension, can be taught through real life situations. Consistent with these findings, the Education Unit is in the process of reviewing and analyzing promises experiments and approaches. The results of these studies will provide basis upon which some lessons for school systems ready to take on these new functions can be applied.