Abstract:

Mexican Education has undergone a major overhaul in the last three years. The first change was to introduce a competences approach in Upper Secondary Education (USE) in 2008 and in Primary and Lower Secondary Education in 2011. Then in 2012 compulsory education was increased to include USE. Then in 2013 and 2014 the Constitution was amended to introduce a system of civil service for teachers and to create an independent National Institute for the Evaluation of Education. These changes make it necessary to undertake a revision of the curriculum of compulsory education, K to the last grade of USE. This review is particularly relevant as one constant preoccupation in Mexican Education Policy for the past 15 years has been the quality of education. Official evaluations and PISA results show poor results in Literacy in Science, Mathematics and Language. In response to this situation, the pedagogical innovations introduced in the reforms are mainly Constructivist. However, didactics, textbooks, and teaching traditions in each subject have been wholeheartedly behaviorist. This paper deals with a critical approach used to assess the curriculum of USE in view of recent reforms and the challenges posed by such contradictions and inconsistencies.

Keywords:

Curriculum evaluation and assessment, Curriculum design, Education innovation, Education based on competences, teaching and learning generic competences.