New strategy seeks to ensure meaningful writing experiences for students throughout Chile

Designed by the UC Center for Educational Transformation (CENTRE) of the UC Faculty of Education, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and the UNDP, the proposal will support more than a thousand teachers through specialized tutoring and collaborative work to strengthen the teaching of writing in urban, rural and extreme schools in the country.

Recovering, improving, and prioritizing school learning were some of the challenges that Chile—like many other countries—had to face after the Covid-19 pandemic. A complex path that is now beginning to pave new directions with the Pedagogical Support strategy: Essential Practices for Teaching Writing, an initiative framed within the Educational Reactivation Plan of the Ministry of Education from Chile, presented on November 24th and led by the UC Center for Educational Transformation (CENTER) in conjunction with Mineduc and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The strategy seeks to strengthen the quality of the teaching and learning processes of writing in early childhood, primary and secondary education through the formation of communities of professionals and the support of specialized tutors with a clear focus: that the teaching of writing be a meaningful and transformative experience for all students with a national reach, reaching schools in Tarapacá, Ñuble, Aysén, La Araucanía and Magallanes and rural, coastal and extreme communities. 

That represents the impact of the project, he mentions. Lina Calle, general coordinator of the initiative developed in conjunction with the UC academics Diego Carrasco placeholder image y Natalia Ávila (UC Faculty of Education) and Soledad Sea Shell y Silvana Arriagada (Faculty of Letters UCIt's not just about training educators, but about permeating classrooms, and writing is key there. “When a child develops writing skills, they not only improve in language, they improve in everything. Writing forces you to organize ideas, to argue, to understand more deeply. That's why we work on writing as a learning tool in all subjects. A student who writes well in science understands phenomena better; one who writes well in history develops critical thinking. It's a democratizing tool that opens real opportunities,” the academic explains.

Between January and June 2026, more than a thousand teachers from 221 schools will participate in training sessions and workshops in learning communities. They will also engage with their peers in short improvement cycles that promote reflection, professional collaboration, and evidence-based decision-making. These practices will motivate communities around reading and writing; teach complex processes in an accessible way; and develop fluency, reflection, and creativity. 

By working with essential practices, explains Lina Calle, a professor of Education at UC, we can “bring teacher training down to earth: what I do in the classroom when I teach writing and what beliefs about it I am transmitting. For this, we use an in-depth methodology: we model, simulate, and give feedback with real classroom evidence. Collaborative and truly practical training.”

Commitment to public education

This is a ministerial program developed in collaboration with a group of high-level academics, highlights Joaquín Walker, executive secretary of the Ministry of Education's Educational Reactivation Plan. This alliance with academia, he explains, is fundamental, and is evident from the initial design phase to the training sessions conducted with Centre UC. "This allows us to offer a unique experience for educational communities and achieve not only a theoretical approach to these essential writing practices, but also a practical experience modeled by tutors who will support the communities," he noted.

It is a joint project with teachers and early childhood educators from across the country, he says. Ernesto Treviño, director of Centre UC“We are committed to contributing to the improvement of teaching through classroom interactions, and we can do so thanks to the outstanding academics who lead this project and the willingness of the educational communities to participate in this initiative together with the UNDP and the Ministry of Education,” she emphasizes. 

The goal, Lina Calle explains, is for the practices and achievements of this project to become permanent and not limited to the project's duration. The aim is for educators to feel confident teaching writing; to have a clear repertoire of Essential Practices that they can use and adapt to their own contexts; and for students to write more and better, finding meaning in writing across all subjects. 

“And most importantly: that schools strengthen their own capacities. That these practices become part of how they do things, not something that depends on an external project. In the long run, I believe this is equity. Writing is one of those skills that most helps to close gaps, because it doesn't depend on where you come from. If we can get more children to establish positive relationships with writing, we are opening real doors for their future,” the academic concludes.