Enseña Chile

Educational Leadership | 2022

How might we improve systems to better assess and develop leadership traits and skills in principals and school leaders that translate into enhanced student performance outcomes?

Meet the Team

Max Hammond || USA

Max holds a BS in psychology and communication from Saint Louis University. As a student he served on social justice committees, worked as a research assistant for laboratories focused on motivation and efficacy in the workplace, and co-facilitated a course on intergroup dialogue. 
After graduation, Max served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. For two years he worked in the city of Tacloban as a youth development facilitator and computer literacy instructor for SOS (Societas Socialis) Children’s Villages. During his third year he was assigned to the National Capital Region (metropolitan Manila) to work as a program specialist for the SOS national office. In this role, he helped standardize and implement a youth empowerment framework for all local SOS Villages in the Philippines. He then returned to the US and served as an AmeriCorps team leader with Campus Compact, a nonprofit dedicated to building democracy through civic education. As a master of global affairs student, Max is the recipient of a Pulte Family Fellowship. 

Kevin Mann || USA

Kevin Mann has worked in the education sector on multiple continents. He served in the Peace Corps in South Africa from 2015 to 2017 as part of the Schools and Community Resource Program and taught English in Shizuoka, Japan through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. He also has worked in Myanmar and the United Kingdom. 
In the United States, Kevin worked with the Petey Greene Program, which supplements correctional education systems by providing individualized tutoring for incarcerated people. He also served a teacher in Camden, New Jersey with Uncommon Schools, a top-performing charter school network. Before coming to Notre Dame, he collaborated with the Peace Corps Virtual Service Program to bring robust remote teaching practices to South African schools. Kevin holds a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. As a master of global affairs student, he is the recipient of a Donald & Marilyn Keough Fellowship and a Monaghan Family Global Fellowship.

María Camila Peralta || Nicaragua

María Camila Peralta holds a BA in economics from Villanova University and postgraduate training in trust fund management from the Latin American Banking Federation. As a student, she served as international projects chair for Business without Borders, leading trips to Nicaragua and fostering financial literacy in the small and medium enterprise sector. 
After graduating, Maria Camila was appointed to the board of directors of the Nicaragua-based nongovernmental organization VISEDAL, a nonprofit that empowers youth from low-income backgrounds by providing quality health and education. She also was part of a young professionals trainee program at Banpro, the largest banking group in Nicaragua and worked as project manager for the innovation department for an insurance broker. Maria Camila also serves as translator and volunteer for FOREST, Nicaragua’s first environmental trust fund. As a master of global affairs student, she is the recipient of a John Hahn / Leticia Foncillas Fellowship.

Dakota Peterson || USA

Dakota Peterson recently completed service work at a small nongovernmental organization in Quito, Ecuador, where she developed English and entrepreneurial leadership curricula for elementary school students. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she facilitated the promotion of food security for the organization’s 335 families and other under-resourced communities. She also collaborated on project design and created a database to analyze risk factors and create a strategic plan.
Before moving to Ecuador, Dakota Lyn taught English to immigrant families in a small, low-income community in southern Spain. She holds BA degrees in sociology and Spanish literature, with a concentration in leadership studies, from Gonzaga University. As a master of global affairs student, Dakota is the recipient of a Keough Family Fellowship. 

Overview

Chile is in the process of changing the organization of the public education system as part of a major institutional reform with wide-ranging possibilities to impact both quality of education and equity.  This transition is shifting the administrative system from 356 municipalities throughout Chile to 70, more centralized, Local Education Service Providers (SLEPs). Through this process, there are many layers of support for teachers, students, and educational administrators, but support for principals has been sparse. This is of high concern as research shows that a principal’s capacity, efficiency, and leadership correlates to student outcomes. 

The non-profit educational organization, Enseña Chile is promoting a movement to transform opportunities for public school students throughout the country. Inspired by Teach for America in the United States, Enseña Chile works to develop a corps of leaders committed to improving access to excellent educational opportunities for students regardless of socio-economic circumstances. Founded in Santiago in 2007, the organization works to provide quality education for high school students by bringing outstanding university graduates with leadership skills into under-resourced schools. Through its Colegios que Aprenden unit, Ensena Chile is working to produce system-wide impact on issues of educational quality, leadership, and equity.

Over the past two years, Enseña Chile, a Chilean Education NGO, has partnered with the University of Notre Dame’s i-Lab team to evaluate best practices and key aspects of supporting principals during and after their transition to SLEPs. The 2022 i-Lab project will build on the work of the 2020 i-Lab team that developed recommendations for the SLEP in one region in the country (Araucania) to improve the outcomes for schools. The 2021 i-Lab team examined the transition of five of the 70 SLEPs that have transitioned throughout Chile, focusing on the role of principals and educational leaders, identifying strengths and weaknesses of the principals’ support network, and providing insights into how best to support principals in the SLEP transition process and beyond.

The 2022 i-Lab project will examine the role that school leadership plays, continuing to focus on the key role of principals, for enhancing outcomes for students, particularly in the evolving SLEP context.  We want to connect leader’s trainable or identifiable skills or traits that best link with student’s outcome (academic and socio-emotional). Currently Colegios Que Aprenden works with the framework provided by the Ministry of leadership skills, but there’s little information on how those skills might be developed or selected in applicants to leadership roles, and how those skills translate to observable school performance.

Definition of success at the conclusion of the project:

Enseña Chile wants to improve our internal Diagnostic System (surveys, interview guides, focus group guides, etc.) to better assess the leadership traits and skills that translate into student performance outcomes. We want to strengthen our belief that notable change comes “leadership first”.

Key Research Questions

Partner Liaison

Location

Organization

Enseña Chile is forming a network of leaders with the conviction and perspective necessary to impact the educational system, both from the experience in the classroom and the school community, as well as from different areas of the system.