Under the direction of Dr. Mirjam Rossa, Head of the Latin America Department, 31 KAAD scholars came together to explore and reflect on equal access to and within the Latin American education system. The seminar was accompanied by the speakers Renate Flügel and Ute Baumgart from the KAAD's Latin America Department; the spiritual accompaniment was provided by Father Prof. Dr. Thomas Eggensperger OP. In addition to the main program, eleven scholars took the opportunity to present their diverse research projects to an interdisciplinary audience over the course of the days.
The opening evening was an opportunity to arrive and get to know each other. After an introduction by Dr. Christian Müller, political scientist and charity theologian as well as academy lecturer in the Department of Politics, Society and International Affairs at the Catholic Social Academy Franz Hitze-Haus, KAAD scholar Pedro Romero led an interactive format in which the participants presented their educational paths in alternating groups of two and described individual stages of their school and academic careers. The unit was entitled "My educational path in stages" ("Mi trayectoria educativa en etapas") and formed the starting point for the content-related work of the following days.
The next morning, Mirjam Rossa introduced the seminar topic in a lecture entitled "Equidad de acceso en la educación latinoamericana" ("Equality of access in Latin American education"). She differentiated between formal access to educational institutions and the actual opportunity to successfully complete educational pathways. For the Latin American context, she referred to a persistently strong segmentation of educational biographies, particularly in primary and secondary education, which is associated with inadequate state funding and significant differences between urban and rural regions. The expansion of private providers in the higher education sector is also accompanied by new social barriers to access. Furthermore, Mirjam Rossa addressed ethnic and racialized inequalities in access to education and placed these in a comparative context with European findings on social selection in the education system.
These fundamental considerations were followed up by the expert impulses of the following days. The educational researcher Dr. Kamille L. Beye (USA), who herself completed her first academic degree via a Fulbright scholarship up to a doctorate at Harvard University, focused on social inequality and poverty as factors in educational processes. In her presentation in English, she highlighted the importance of indirect costs of learning, such as transportation, digital equipment, nutrition or psychosocial stability, which influence educational pathways in everyday life and further limit access to education.
Structural issues of the school system were the focus of the presentation in Portuguese by KAAD alumna Prof. Dr. Fabiana Faleiros (Brazil). She addressed funding structures in primary and secondary education and described their impact on equipment, teaching conditions and the situation of teaching staff. In this context, she addressed the unequal distribution of resources between urban and rural regions as well as the different framework conditions of state, private and church schools. According to Fabiana Faleiros, the institutional separation of these school types shapes learning conditions, experiences of belonging and later educational transitions.
Further perspectives from Spanish-speaking Latin America came from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. KAAD scholar Neyda Campaz Camacho approached questions of equal access from a language and discourse theory perspective. She discussed how language acts as a barrier to access in the educational context, in that recognition, participation and institutional authority are conveyed via linguistic codes and communicative practices. In particular, she addressed the importance of ethnic and social attributions that can influence access to educational institutions and positioning within the education system. Following on from this, KAAD scholar Nathalie Manco Villa presented the 'Cátedra de Paz', a school-based teaching format for peace education that has been introduced as a compulsory part of the curriculum in Colombia. She explained how this format is used in conflict-ridden regions to deal with experiences of violence and conflict in the school setting and to make issues of reconciliation, remembrance and social cohesion the subject of the lessons.
The issue of access to higher education was continued in contributions by KAAD alumni Willy W. Chambi (Bolivia) and Dr. Álvaro Ezcurra Rivero (Peru). Willy Chambi described the growing importance of private universities in the Bolivian higher education system against the backdrop of limited capacities at public universities. He pointed out that, on the one hand, private universities open up new formal access routes, but at the same time contribute to greater segmentation according to ability to pay and social background, as tuition fees and institutional selection mechanisms distribute access unequally. Álvaro Ezcurra Rivero dealt with existing access gaps in the Peruvian higher education system and addressed structural hurdles in the transition from secondary to higher education. In this context, he referred to the cooperation between the KAAD and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru), which aims to reduce financial burdens and accompany institutional transitions. Using this example, he showed how support programs become effective when they focus not only on the start of studies, but also on the further course of the educational path.
In parallel to the expert impulses, the scholars presented their ongoing research projects in parallel panels. The presentations covered work from various disciplines and related to questions of access to education, educational inequality and institutional framework conditions in different national contexts. In the ensuing discussion, methodological approaches, empirical findings and social implications of the projects were addressed and explored in greater depth in an interdisciplinary exchange.
In the concluding reflection round on "Education and responsibility in the personal and social context" ("Educación y responsabilidad en el contexto personal y social"), the perspectives discussed in the seminar came together again. Among other things, the multidimensionality of equal access, the importance of language and institutional thresholds and the question of what role support programs and educational institutions can play in accompanying educational pathways were discussed.
The program concluded with a pre-Christmas tour through Münster's city centre and a multilingual church service in the Marienkapelle of Münster Cathedral, which was performed by five scholars from the Adveniat-KAAD scholarship program with songs from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin America.
