Distance Secondary Education in Rural Latin America

Latin American countries have been implementing a new system of distance teaching-learning, especially for those rural students living in remote poor areas. The main features behind the distance education projects are the following: 1) Centralized management by the head offices of the Ministries of Education, 2) Although parents and communities are motivated to collaborate with the government in developing distance education, economic resources are lacking, 3) Rural teachers' working conditions are poor and unstable, 4) Many students, especially girls, need to work for their families so that they are often absent from school. The educational projects depend on the political situation. Some governments have introduced distance education without sufficient research into the success and failure of previous projects. This is especially true of those using mass media. In some cases, the technologies used in distance education are insufficient or obsolete; often teachers do not know how to use them. Thus, to improve rural distance education, attention must be focused on the role of rural teachers, policy implementation, educational technologies, and comparative evaluation studies.