Asesoría Educativa en el Ecuador: campos de tensión

Educational Consulting in Ecuador: Fields of tension

Gustavo Vallejo-Villacís

Asesoría Pedagógica Consultores

asesoria.pedagogica.consultores@gmail.com

(Received: 11/06/2020; Accepted: 15/06/2020; Final version received: 15/08/2020)

Suggested citation: Vallejo-Villacís, Gustavo. (2020). Educational Consulting in Ecuador: Fields of tension. Revista Cátedra, 3(3), 90-113.

Resumen

La asesoría educativa en el Ecuador emerge en el año 2013 como una función que reemplaza a la supervisión escolar. Prácticamente no existen estudios o análisis sobre esta importante función dentro del sistema organizacional del Ministerio de Educación. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo describir y relacionar los campos de tensión que existen en la gestión de la asesoría educativa. Los campos de tensión son aquellas situaciones de la asesoría educativa en las que se pueden encontrar dos extremos de interpretación. Para establecer los aspectos esenciales del estudio se realizó una investigación documental y una encuesta voluntaria a 30 asesores. Los campos de tensión son identificados con los siguientes criterios: requerimientos del sistema, intencionalidad, contexto, ámbito, enfoque, característica y permanencia. Se analiza antinómicamente: nivel central–nivel local, control–cambio educativo, escuelas iguales–escuelas diferentes, acompañamiento–evaluación, paradigma cualitativo–paradigma cuantitativo, verticalidad–horizontalidad y desaparición–estabilidad. La conclusión principal es que el nivel central predomina sobre el nivel institucional educativo en los aspectos pedagógicos y administrativos. Se define que es posible lograr equilibrios entre los diferentes campos de tensión identificados. También que la asesoría educativa es el equipo humano que puede lograr este balance a través de su gestión técnica de alto nivel y experticia. La prospección es que los decisores políticos del sistema afiancen la asesoría junto con su función complementaria que es la auditoría educativa.

Palabras clave:

Asesoría, estándares, gestión, modelo, orientación, tensión

Abstract

Educational counseling in Ecuador emerges in 2013 as a function that replaces school supervision. There are practically no studies or analyses of this important function within the organizational system of the Ministry of Education. This article aims to describe and relate the areas of tension that exist in the management of educational advising. Fields of tension are those situations in educational counseling in which two extremes of interpretation can be found. In order to establish the essential aspects of the study, a documentary investigation and a voluntary survey of 30 advisors were carried out. The fields of tension are identified with the following criteria: system requirements, intentionality, context, scope, focus, characteristic and permanence. It is analyzed antinomically: central-local level, control-educational change, equal schools-different schools, accompaniment-evaluation, qualitative paradigm-quantitative paradigm, verticality-horizontality and disappearance-stability. The main conclusion is that the central level predominates over the institutional educational level in the pedagogical and administrative aspects. It is defined that it is possible to achieve a balance between the different fields of tension identified. It is also defined that the educational consultancy is the human team that can achieve this balance through its high-level technical management and expertise. The idea is that the political decision makers of the system will strengthen the consultancy together with its complementary function, which is the educational audit.

Key words

Advice, standards, management, model, orientation, tension

1. Introduction

Educational counseling is a function that, along with educational auditing, replaced school supervision. As part of this process, the Ecuadorian authorities presented in 2009 a draft Education Law as described by Aguerrondo and Xifra (2012a): "One of the proposals is the redefinition of the framework for the task of educational supervisors that arises from the needs to modernize the State and from a deep social questioning on the part of these State agents. (p. 5). The state reforms included a reorganization of the public administration in a considerable effort of deconcentration, territorial distribution, and government management.

The consultancy service orients, accompanies and carries out a formative follow-up of the pedagogical management of the fiscal and fiscal-missional educational institutions. These central activities of the consultancy expose the intention of the State to transform the educational system in terms of pedagogical accompaniment and evaluation. Thus, "it is externalized in the official replacement of the old system of educational supervision, characteristic of the centralized-regulated school model, by a new system, known as 'support and monitoring of educational management', which is consistent with the autonomous-regulated model. (Cevallos, 2016, p. 69). Within the set of reforms of the system, those referring to counseling represent a substantial change of direction in ministerial support for educational institutions.

As an emerging function within the educational system, there is no analysis or research on this organizational emergence. Therefore, the initial question is: What aspects characterize the emergence and initial development of educational counseling in Ecuador? The emergence of educational consulting is subject to the rigors of an institutional element of the State. A series of contrasting events have been present in the political context of its origin and early progress. In this process of change, situations of contradiction are established which, located within two poles of interpretation, are called fields of tension. Gómez et al. (2017) point out that the essential feature of this transformation is a kind of "oxymoron of political theory" (p. 11) in which a series of confrontational and even paradoxical aspects are interwoven. The identification of these fields of tension, establishing their characteristics and correlating them, is the problem addressed by the article.

This is essential in a reality of heterogeneous professional and academic institutional management teams, which requires constant support from the Ministry of Education. Methodologically, the article is of a descriptive and relational nature.

The main challenge of this research is the establishment of criteria for the characterization of educational counseling in its emergence. Pedagogical and political theory generally exposes the confrontation between the central and local levels as the main point of tension in an educational system. Identifying other aspects of opposition, placing them at the same level as the area of tension in the field, and unraveling an area that has been little reflected upon, is part of the challenge. Researching the processes of the educational system generated by the ministry of education has the difficulty of accessing official information. This can be overcome with the use of public documentation issued by the state agency, especially its adjective and substantive regulations. The investigation of state affairs is always sensitive to the political decision-maker who leads the processes, as in the case of the educational structure. This sensitivity can be a real, although unnecessary, impediment to academic research.

The article contains a retrospective view of educational assessment from the perspective of the function of school inspection and supervision. As a function that emerges in the system, it synthesizes some legal and current management aspects that characterize it. The main section addresses the seven identified fields of tension. This is a bibliographic approach and the presentation of the results of the survey that visualizes the reality from the educational advisory team itself. The respective conclusions obtained in relation to the research are presented and, in some way, evoke the prospective of the function.

2. General considerations

2.1 Remote background: educational inspectorates

Ecuador adopted its educational model fundamentally from the European side because of its historical characteristic of being a Spanish colony. From that time on, encyclopedic and bookish programs were imposed here. All the glimpses of education in the colonial time were under the sign of the Christian religion. "There was an alienating and authoritarian tendency aimed at supporting the crown and the means that the church had to impose its creed. (OEI, n.d., p. 5). This provision was maintained even with independence as a state in 1830. It was with the liberal revolution of 1895 and the following decades that important transformations were achieved in the field of education.

The political-cultural changes of Old Europe, inscribed in the "Age of Enlightenment", varied social ideas in Ecuador and, in fact, produced variations in the thinking about education and its institutional practice. The radical position of liberalism, its triumphs in the struggle for a new political power, determined that education was the responsibility of the State and that it had a secular and democratic conception; however, there were no changes in the class condition of education: the encyclopedic trait was reflected in the Europeanizing instruction that the minorities that held political and economic power received (OEI, n.d., p. 6).

Aguerrondo (2013) refers that "the historical origins of the function of school inspection go back to the emergence of modern educational systems and the formation of national states, processes that have occurred since the mid-nineteenth century. (p. 4). Specifically, the figure of the "inspector general of studies" appears for the first time in the French legislation of 1802. Since its inception, this function has had three tasks: control, support and linkage. The control in function of the different aspects of the administrative and organizational aspects of the educational institution. The support in terms of an advice given from a higher hierarchy and external to each school. The linkage by being a transmission belt from the central level to the intermediate and local levels of educational management. The perspective was that "through the fulfillment of these three tasks, supervision would lead to the improvement of the quality of education" (Carron and De Grauwe, 2003, p. 5). This approach was the fundamental principle that guided the activity of educational inspection in Europe and the countries of its pedagogical orbit such as Ecuador.

2.2 Historical references in Ecuador

Educational consulting has its historical roots in educational inspection and supervision, as an important element within the Ecuadorian system. At the dawn of the republic, specifically during the regime of Vicente Rocafuerte (1934-1938), the decree of the first Organic of Public Education was issued. This norm established the General Direction of Studies (predecessor of the Ministry of Education) and the Subdirections and Inspectorates of Instruction. The first as a regulatory agency and the second as the bodies in charge of complying with and enforcing the regulations (OEI, n.d., p. 1).

Subsequently, the Organic Law of Public Instruction of 1906, at the height of the liberal emergency, provided for the "School Visitors Office" within the provincial agencies. The function of the School Visitor, "was coercive and had as its objective to monitor, control, verify, and punish the deficiencies of the teachers, without offering them any type of orientation" (Piruch, 2005, p. 30). This at a time when there were shortcomings of all kinds. The 1912 Report to the Nation by the Minister of Public Instruction describes this reality:

We do not have adequate premises, nor do we have teaching tools, nor suitable personnel, nor texts, nor programs, nor a rational and direct pedagogical system that makes the school what it should be: a stimulating and invigorating center for the child's soul, an attractive center where the child finds something as a function of the work of his physical, moral and intellectual development. Dark, ramshackle and unhygienic rooms, where the child feels like depressed and suffocated, and therefore finds only a seat, if not an adobe or an earthen floor; grumpy teachers, whose hard mission consists in repeating in chorus the syllabary and falling down with fists on the boy that committed the crime of being distracted for a moment; forced, monotonous, continuous and abominable lessons as much as they are obstructive. (OEI, n.d., p. 5)

From 1938 to 1966 the "School Inspection" was a provincial body within the Ministry of Public Education (OEI, n.d., p. 3). This denomination gives an account of a dialectic development of the function. Piruch (2005), specifies that:

School Inspectors strive to transform their role into one of guidance and assistance. They carry out their work in a more affable and cordial manner, less imperative, although the tendency towards self-sufficiency and the conviction that all decisions must come from above persists. In short, the attitude, the way of acting, had changed, but the procedures remained almost the same as those of the visitors (p. 24).

From 1966 onwards, it assumes the name "Educational Supervision" in the perspective of having a different role from the previous ones. Of course, there are important changes. However, the function maintains the hierarchical-pyramidal model of the State that imposes a vertical and bureaucratic organization of the educational system. This structure "has not allowed for the adaptation of education to the unique needs of the beneficiaries and different sectors" (Aguerrondo and Xifra, 2012a, p. 5). The National Model of Educational Supervision provided for the functions of the supervisor as comptroller, mediator and coordinator of the technical, pedagogical and administrative aspects. These functions were executed through monitoring, evaluation, accompaniment and assistance to the institutions. In other words, a supervisor had three functions: 1) Audit, 2) Consulting, and 3) Mediation.

The supervisory model and function were exhausted in the Ecuadorian educational system. The changes required by both the structure and the national policies defined in the Ten-Year Education Plan 2006-2015, imposed a transformation of this instance. Aguerrondo and Xifra (2011) point out that:

The Ministry of Education worked on the proposal of a new education law that was sent to the Legislative Assembly in September 2009 and was approved in January 2011. One of the most important proposals in this new law has to do with a substantive change in the model of educational supervision, since it proposes the elimination of the figure of supervisors and their replacement by two distinct roles: advisors on the one hand and auditors on the other (p. 4).

In view of its wear and tear on the system as a whole, the transformation of supervision into educational consulting and auditing was inevitable. The process involved the executive and legislative function of the Ecuadorian State due to the complexity of the issue and the actors involved. The transition included several supervisors who were referred to the new function after an evaluation according to the required profile.

Another important historical reference for advisory services in Ecuador is the educational supervision of the Intercultural Bilingual Education Model instituted in 1988. As defined by Piruch (2005): "The Intercultural Bilingual Education Supervisor is a technical advisory body that defines socio-organizational policies, pedagogical and administrative techniques, aimed at fulfilling the principles, goals and objectives of the Intercultural Bilingual Education System" (p. 46). Although it maintains the three functions of general educational supervision in the country, the advisory and support function was emphasized in this model.

The technical pedagogical support provided in early education is also the other reference point for educational counseling. The service to attend to the student population under six years of age was born in the light of the pottery revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. Pautasso (2009) states that "the incorporation of liberalism as a national system, the adoption of secularism as the fundamental axis of education, the emancipation and entry of women into the labor and intellectual market, the greater concentration of children, the development of a certain awareness in terms of harnessing the potential of the child" (p. 5), contributed to the origin of nursery education. At the end of the 20th century, the schooled modalities called kindergartens or incorporated to other educational institutions, received the pedagogical support of specialized supervisors in their majority. In the non-schooling modalities, there was technical and pedagogical assistance from teachers with specialization and experience in working with infants. These out-of-school modalities included the National Preschool Education Program - PRONEPE, Operation Child Rescue Program (ORI) and the Child Development Program (INNFA).

3. Educational counselling: an emerging function

3.1 Decentralization and educational quality

The most general references to educational consultancy are in the Organic Law on Intercultural Education - LOEI (Ministry of Education, 2016). Within the competencies of the Academic Council of the Intercultural and or Bilingual Education Circuit: "Art. 31.- To promote educational quality in establishments of the circuit together with educational advisors and auditors" (p. 35). As one of the functions of the public teaching career: "Art. 114.- Educational professionals may exercise the following functions: f) Educational advisors" (p. 64).

In the substantive legislation, there are several provisions in the General Regulations to the Organic Law on Intercultural Education (2015): in the set of powers of the Deputy Director or Vice Director of an educational institution: "Art. 45.- (numeral) 5. It determines the main function of the advisory service: "Art. 309.- To orient the institutional management towards the fulfillment of the educational quality standards defined by the Central Level of the National Educational Authority" (p. 89). The National Model of Support and Monitoring of Educational Management (MNASGE, 2013), specifies the functions in correlation to the aforementioned regulations:

1. 1.Advice and guidance for the implementation, development and execution of the curriculum.

2. 2.Orientation of innovation and educational change activities.

3. 3.Pedagogical communication and coordination.

4. Accompaniment and monitoring of pedagogical and management processes (p. 9).

All these legal and technical determinations should be understood as the definitions of an emerging function in Ecuador. In the other Latin American countries, educational counseling continues to be part of the functions of educational supervision. In the case of Mexico, for example, educational advising also exists separately as a state service, but under the level of supervision (Antúnez, 2012 and López, 2010). Thus, in the continent, the Ecuadorian model is a pioneer in separating the control and support functions.

The new model of educational management includes five levels as shown in Table 1. The essential activity of the actors at each level is defined by the professional statute of organizational management by processes (Ministry of Education, 2017a). These activities show the principle of a governing state and of minor coordination and execution instances that play a specific role close to autonomy. They express in practice the possibility of transforming the structure of the educational system in its architecture. Cevallos (2016) points out:

5. the institutional architecture of a school system refers to the way in which the schools in that system are structurally organized, including the power and other relationships established between the actors in the schools (mainly teachers and principals), the representatives of the State - national, regional or local - and other actors in the system, such as the students and their families, the unions and employers' associations related to education, and other members and sectors of society (p. 57).

Successful educational systems, among other factors for their improvement, have developed a level of mediation between educational institutions and the central level. Of course, in some countries this intermediation is accompanied by control and evaluation as is done by the inspectorates or supervision. In Ecuador, the very well-defined function for this function is educational counseling. Mourshed, Chijioke and Barber (2012) specify:

the educational systems we analyze are progressing on their path of improvement, they seem to depend more and more on an "intermediate level" that acts between the center and the schools. This intermediate level supports improvement by providing three important aspects to the system: practical and specific support to schools, a buffer between the school and the center, and a channel for sharing and integrating improvements among schools (p.18).

SYSTEM LEVEL	CORE BUSINESS
Educational Authority	It guarantees and ensures compliance with the right to education at all four levels of management.
Central Level	Design and update systems for educational consultancy in the administrative and pedagogical fields, in the deconcentrated levels
Zonal Level (9 Zones)	Coordinate and implement policies, regulations, strategies, plans and programs for educational counseling.
District Level (147 Districts)	Execute the policies, regulations, strategies, plans and programs for educational management consultancy.
Circuit Level (1117 Circuits)	Execute the policies, regulations, strategies, plans and programs for educational management consulting.
Institutional level	To advise and supervise the work of teachers.

Table 1: Essential Educational Advisory Actions

The empirical evidence confirms the need for a mediator between the ministry and the schools to achieve improved management in the classroom. The pedagogical literature ratifies this assertion under the premise that although educational institutions are the primary factor in improving the quality of learning "by themselves they are not sufficient to achieve this objective in a sustainable manner. (Cevallos, 2016, p. 57). It is indispensable "to help schools with knowledge obtained from scientifically validated studies and from experiences carried out by other centers to successfully implement and develop processes of change that allow them to better achieve their objectives. (Muñoz and Murillo, 2010, p. 8). Improved pedagogical management in educational institutions depends on their own internal strengths and the external support that consulting can provide. It should always be considered that this external support also includes the educational audit function that carries out the institutional evaluation. The two functions are those foreseen in the New National Model of Support and Follow-up that replaced educational supervision.

3.2 National situation

The transition process from supervision to educational counseling is ratified in 2011 with the approval of the LOEI (Ministry of Education, 2016). In practice, it begins with the incorporation of educational advisory teams in zones 6, 7, 8 and 9 of Ecuador. By 2018, teams had already been placed in the other zones of the country. However, there is a significant difference between what has been planned and what has been executed in terms of the human talent required in these teams. Table 2 shows these differences and the numerical situation of educational advisory services.

According to Agreement 557-2012 of the National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES, 2012), there are "140 administrative planning districts, as well as 1134 administrative planning circuits, at the national level, for the management of the entities and agencies that make up the Executive Function" (p. 2). The initial design for the formation of the national educational advisory team provided for two advisors for each circuit, for a total of 2260. By the end of 2019, there were 146 officials, which is equivalent to 6.5% compliance. Administrative zones 8 and 9, Guayaquil and Quito, were the most equipped with 21.6% and 14.7%. The least served, with 1.9% and 2.9%, respectively, were Zone 4 (Manabí and Santo Domingo de Los Tsáchilas) and Zone 5 (Bolívar, Guayas, Los Ríos, Santa Elena and Galápagos).

Zone	No. of districts	No. of circuits	Projected number (Number of circuits x 2)	Executed number	Percentage executed
1	16	139	278	9	3,2 %
2	8	58	116	9	7,8 %
3	19	142	284	11	3,9 %
4	15	155	310	6	1,9 %
5	25	192	384	11	2,9 %
6	17	120	240	25	10,4 %
7	19	165	330	19	5,8 %
8	12	67	134	29	21,6 %
9	9	92	184	27	14,7 %
Delimited No.		4
Total	140	1134	2260	146	6,5 %

Table 2: Number and percentage of educational advisors projected and executed

To the scarce number of educational advisors, we must add their referral to various activities determined by the Central Level of the National Educational Authority. From the beginning, within the system, they carried out activities other than those of counseling. They were support in the registration processes that since 2014 are carried out through technological platforms by the Ministry of Education. They acted as support in the high school diploma. They guided coordinators and operators in the sites for the transfer of students who are referred to the fiscal system. They fulfilled the functions of educational auditors in those institutions that entered into situations of organizational and management complexity. They have carried out and continue to carry out administrative functions at the level of zonal coordination, departmental units of the ministry, and district directorates. They were and are counterparts of the Ministry of Education before various governmental and non-governmental organizations. Most of these activities and others that have been executed are related to educational regulation. As of 2018, referral was less frequent and the teams were able to focus their management within the specific functions foreseen for educational counseling.

3.3 Action of educational counselling

Consulting is a process of orientation and accompaniment of educational management in the perspective of the institutions reaching quality standards. The MNASGE (2013) designed by the Ministry of Education considers it as "a technical action of a professional nature whose main function is to guide institutional management" (p. 9). This general orientation process is subdivided into specific processes set out in the Manual de Asesoría Educativa (Ministry of Education, 2014). The first corresponds to planning, which contains as activities the "preparation, identification, preparation and acceptance of applications, organization of advisory activities and agenda planning" (p. 10). The second sub-process is the assessment itself, which involves among its actions the "situational diagnosis, assessment planning, accompaniment and monitoring of the implementation and evaluation of results" (p. 10). Finally, the cycle closes with the evaluation that includes "assessment, analysis of results and professional development activities" (p. 10). This manual is one of the main references that the advisory teams have for the development of their function.

The general process described here refers to the educational assessment outside the school. For reasons of the emergence of the function, the symbolic figure of counseling is perceived in the team of professionals sent by the ministry to the institution. However, as already established in the legal basis, educational counseling is also the responsibility of the principal authorities of an institution. These elements contribute to the classification of educational counseling as external and internal. The external one corresponds to the work that is designed, executed, and evaluated by the team of professionals designated for that purpose by the educational authority. The internal one that refers to the attribution of the rectorship or school direction in the area of support to the teaching staff. In any case, the principle is that the educational institution is understood as an organizational, administrative, and pedagogical unit. This notion of totality means that external or internal educational consulting must direct its efforts toward meeting the standards of school management. Therefore, for the Ministry of Education (2017b), these standards:

apply to educational institutions. They refer to management processes and institutional practices that contribute to the proper functioning of the institution. In addition, they favor the professional development of the people who make up the educational institution, allowing it to come closer to its ideal functioning (p. 14).

The standards of school management determine the actions of the advisory teams. In the dimension of administrative management, it has to do with institutional organization, professional development of authorities and teachers, institutional information and communication, and infrastructure, equipment and complementary services. In the second dimension, the pedagogical one, there is the teaching and learning component and the student counseling and pedagogical reinforcement. The third dimension refers to school coexistence and participation and strategic alliances for cooperation for development. The fourth dimension corresponds to risk management and protection.

In practical terms, external educational counseling accompanies the governing bodies in the construction of various strategic planning tools. These tools are elaborated, ideally, with the participation of the entire educational community under the leadership of the authorities. The advisory team should be involved in the two aspects involved in the construction of strategic planning elements: processes and products. It involves accompanying the authorities of the educational center in the design, elaboration, application and evaluation of three essential instruments: Institutional Educational Project, Institutional Curricular Planning and Code of Coexistence. The orientation of the advisory team includes elements such as the attention to students with Special Educational Needs with curricular adaptations. Also, the support to the internal training in some institutions and the construction of documents of administrative and pedagogical procedures. An important aspect that helps the work of the external advisory team is the implementation of cooperative work in institutional networks.

The action of the external advisory team in the educational institutions has as a starting point three established motivations. The first is the attention to those institutions that have an educational audit report. In this case, the critical points found are analyzed and an improvement plan is elaborated with the processes and products to be fulfilled. The second is the institutional request in which it provides guidance on the specific points indicated in the request. The third one is those processes generated by the zonal coordination or sub-secretariats and the National Direction of Educational Management Consultancy - DNAGE.

The accompaniment visit implies an action protocol that is established in the Code of Ethics defined by the DNAGE (Ministry of Education, 2014). The established ethical principles are: "professional behavior, objectivity, confidentiality, cooperation and loyalty, criticality, initiative" (p. 8). Professional behavior implies the expression of the following ethical values: "freedom and responsibility, honesty, punctuality, tolerance, justice, service, observance and respect for the norm, and commitment" (p. 7). The concrete application of these principles and ethical values provides confidence in the actors and subjects of the consultancy at the different levels of the system.

4. Methodology

The article, in methodological terms, is of a descriptive nature since it "seeks to specify the important properties, characteristics and profiles of individuals, groups, communities or any other phenomenon that is subject to analysis" (Cortés and León, 2004, p. 20). It implies a documentary investigation of historical and current aspects of the advice known in other countries as part of the school inspection or supervision. Historically, it synthetically traces the trajectory of this function throughout its presence in the educational structures at the national level. It involves an analysis of the adjective and substantive legislation surrounding the educational advisory function within the Ecuadorian system. The current aspect determines the configuration of the educational system at different levels of self-management in what corresponds to the subject. An anonymous and voluntary survey was carried out among thirty advisors in active service and untied due to retirement at a national level. In this way we obtained the perception of this professional group on the identified fields of tension and anchor the reflection in their reality.

5. Results and discussions

5.1 Fields of tension in educational consulting

Fields of tension are those situations in educational counselling where two extremes of interpretation can be found. Although they are presented as antipodes in terms that are clearly opposed, their differences should not be understood as insurmountable. Rather, these situations are antinomies: "contradiction between two legal precepts or between two rational principles" (RAE, 2019). These oppositions are dynamic and will depend on the time and space of their application so that they can be expressed towards one of the poles of interpretation. In general terms, these dynamics would allow for a balance in the management of educational counseling. The fields of tension with the criteria for their definition are found in Table 3.

FIELD	CRITERIA	OPPOSITION
Field of tension 1	System requirements	Central level versus local level
Field of tension 2	Intentionality	Control versus Educational Change
Field of tension 3	Context	Same schools versus different schools
Field of tension 4	Scope	Accompaniment versus Evaluation
Field of tension 5	Focus	Qualitative Paradigm versus Quantitative Paradigm
Field of tension 6	Relationship with executives	Verticality versus Horizontality
Field of tension 7	Permanence	Disappearance versus Stability

Table 3: Tension Areas in Educational Consulting

Standaert (2012) constructs the framework for interpreting the quality of education in terms of the influence of central-level policy with that of the local level. "Inspection systems are organized at the central level, from where the quality of schools is monitored and assured through that function" (p. 31). The educational structure as a whole is designed from the central level through legislation and public policies determined by a government. This structure has enormous weight and imposition in the definitions made at the local educational level. The compulsory curriculum (organization by areas, objectives, content, etc.), educational sub-levels, structure of internal institutional bodies, and many aspects are determined "from above". Obviously, these determinations establish specific administrative and pedagogical dynamics at all other levels of the educational system.

On the other hand, one must consider the cultural diversity and elements of the economic and sociocommunity environment of the educational institution. Internally, the institutional culture is made up of a heterogeneous academic training of teachers, the climate of coexistence, leadership capacity and many other factors. From the perspective of change and the teaching profession, "schools are not organizations where you learn. In general, they are not interesting or rewarding places for teachers or students" (Fullan and Hargreaves, 1999, p. 12). The implementation at the local level, for Ecuador the district, circuit and institutional levels, is subject to contingencies inherent to the context in which it takes place.

As can be seen in Table 4, the external educational advisory teams believe that the central level prevails over the institutional level. It should be considered that in the public regulation of educational systems there are three emerging effects: The "contamination effect" or the dissemination of discourses, texts, and ideologies; the "hybridization effect" understood as the overlapping and crossbreeding of different logics, discourses, and practices in the definition and in political action; and the "mosaic effect" that allows for the identification of the progressive change of the traditional idea of the educational system" (Miranda et al, n.d., p. 1). A plausible explanation is that there is a juncture, somewhat extended in time, of the emergence of the advisory function. Its positioning in the system, which should be considered a global innovation, requires state leadership that can only be carried out at the ministerial level. Not doing so would imply the configuration of a dispersed function without identity. However, part of that identity should accept that curricular implementation is an institutional responsibility and requires support in that direction.

In the educational advisory function, the determinations of the central level of the Ministry of Education prevail over the needs of the institutional level (schools, colleges).
I totally agree	40 %
Agree	43 %
Neither agree nor disagree	7 %
Disagreeing	7 %
Strongly disagree	3 %

Table 4: Tension field 1: Central level versus local level

The second field is that the action of educational counseling becomes a "control agency or a factor of educational change" (Velásquez, 2011, p.1). At the extreme of becoming an element of control, it would have a function that emphasizes the administrative over the pedagogical. It would be characterized by an auditing and punitive action that emphasizes the verification of the way in which the legal regulations in force are applied. This verification, by express delegation of the law, presupposes the confirmation of the school's functioning, especially with regard to the directors and teachers. The consequence of this control leads to the exercise of another broader function, which is that of institutional evaluation" (Casanova, 2005, p.3). Excessive control heteronomizes institutional management, creates dependency, and practically diminishes an institution's own administrative and pedagogical initiatives and development. As an agent of change, consulting is the service that is best positioned to guarantee appropriate quality development of the institutions. This is achieved through knowledge of the legal regulations in force and their contextualized compliance. The consulting teams have conceptual and empirical mastery in the different areas of administrative and pedagogical management. Such expertise results in guiding the change of an institutional dynamic that requires renewal for its development. It includes an influence that can achieve renewed capacities in the institutional actors. This extreme also applies to the capacity of mediation between the different levels of management of the system that the educational consultancy has.

In Stress Field 2, expressed quantitatively in Table 5, it is established that most of the external educational advisory teams think that the control aspects investigated are the ones that predominate. It is consistent with Stress Field 1, since the central level is understood to emphasize the verification of the implementation of the norms. Muñoz (2017) states:

In the control societies a new order appears whose regime of domination tends to optimize and increase in subtlety those forms of power of the disciplinary regime. In them, the individual no longer needs to be in a closed institution to be subjected to certain technologies of power: The walls of the institutions collapse; so it becomes impossible to distinguish between the inside and the outside (p. 325).

Therefore, an element that weighs heavily is that the authorities and teachers of educational institutions look at the educational advisory teams as the previous supervision. It should be considered that because of the structure of the survey, the question was asked about one pole of the field of tension and not the other.

In the function of educational consultancy, the verification of the way in which the regulations in force are applied and the confirmation of the organizational functioning of the educational institution are predominant.
I totally agree	37 %
Agree	47 %
Neither agree nor disagree	3 %
Disagreeing	7 %
Strongly disagree	7 %

Table 5: Tension Field 2: Control versus Educational Change

The third field of tension in consulting is produced by the political-educational context that generates the binomial institutional homogeneity/diversity. On the one hand, the support of an institutional process or product seeks to guarantee that all schools and colleges reach educational quality standards in a more or less similar way. This refers to compliance with the compulsory curriculum, the minimum organization required in administrative and pedagogical matters, and the definition of the curriculum. It is intended that there be homogeneity in the existence of documents and strategic processes such as the Institutional Educational Project, Institutional Curriculum Plan and Code of Harmonious Coexistence. On the other hand, the focus is to contribute to making educational institutions different. This distinction has its source in the differences of its student population or educational level that it has in its offer. It takes into account the community contexts that surround the school, the socio-cultural groups it serves. This perspective attends to and promotes institutional potentialities towards relative autonomy with respect to the deconcentrated levels of which it is part. In this pole, the advisory teams will not change the function or the standards but the type of process and content of the accompaniment.

The answers of the advisors are dispersed in this question about the similarity/difference of the institutions they support as can be seen in Table 6. While 33% are "Strongly Agree" and 30% "Agree", there is another 30% who are "Disagree" and "Strongly Disagree". Overall, it is considered that the essential thing is that the institutions achieve the standards equally and simultaneously their products and processes are adequate to their school context. It is possible that in the question "similar" has been understood as a general requirement of the system without necessarily neglecting the specifics of the institutional reality.

For the advisory teams the perspective is that schools/schools achieve as similar as possible the standards of educational quality.
I totally agree	33 %
Agree	30 %
Neither agree nor disagree	7 %
Disagreeing	27 %
Strongly disagree	3 %

Table 6: Tension Field 3: Same Schools versus Different Schools

The fourth field of tension arises when the evaluation (control) and advisory functions of educational supervision/inspection are contradictory. In the Ecuadorian case, since these responsibilities are separated into teams of different officials, the situation even arises very frequently. Consulting implies accompanying institutional directors in the various processes aimed at improving educational quality standards. The beginning of this accompaniment requires an institutional evaluation that is not always possible to be carried out by the educational audit team. In general, the advisory team also applies a situational diagnosis foreseen in its procedure’s manual. The institutional evaluation report issued by the educational audit team contains a series of recommendations. Strictly speaking, this corresponds to the functions of the advisory team but which the auditor cannot fail to establish as suggestions.

The accompaniment carried out by the educational consultancy implies having an institutional evaluation carried out by the same team of advisors.
I totally agree	27 %
Agree	30 %
Neither agree nor disagree	6 %
Disagreeing	17 %
Strongly disagree	20 %

Table 7: Tension Field 4: Accompaniment versus Evaluation

The relationship between monitoring and evaluation is notoriously dispersed, as can be seen in Table 7. The accumulated 57% agree and 37% disagree. The majority of schools/fiscal colleges have not been audited and therefore do not have their institutional evaluation. This is explained by the number of educational auditors that is significantly less than the number of advisory auditors. This leads to educational advisory teams developing a situational diagnosis as foreseen in their manual and eventually considered as an institutional evaluation. Otherwise, the determination of the educational advisory and audit functions is very clearly specified in the regulations and design of the MNASGE.

The fifth area of tension is presented in the perspective that counseling is essentially a socio-educational process that requires research to contextualize its development. There is a wide literature in the academy about qualitative and quantitative paradigms, both in their epistemological foundations and in the methodological elements that make them concrete. Here we try to make a specific application in the context of Ecuadorian educational consulting. Emphasizing the quantitative in the consulting activity implies prioritizing the parameters of support and accompaniment in strategic planning. For this reason, it is of a deductive nature. It emphasizes the number of visits, the frequency of meetings with institutional authorities, the number of accompaniment processes, among other aspects of quantity. Everything is transformed into numerical data: situations observed, attention records, application measures, achievements and difficulties. The quantitative method gives importance to the objective, the precision of the procedures and the quantification based on indicators established through variables. In the qualitative aspect, the educational consultancy bases its actions in strict relation to the characteristics of the group of authorities, teachers and the institutional environment. Therefore, the qualitative perspective is of an inductive nature. It tries to understand the school director within his own scenario that constitutes the reference framework for the development of the accompaniment processes. The information is delivered as descriptive texts, narrative results of their observations, explanations of interviews conducted, among other forms.

Table 8 shows that 57% of the people surveyed agree with the accumulated data. 37% disagree that the objective prevails over the subjective and generally over the specifics. The pressure to deliver information to the higher levels of the national education authority and other state bodies is the main motivation for this emphasis. For decision making at the central and zonal levels, this field information produced by the advisory teams becomes an indispensable input. This demand within the system imposes the perception of the prevalence of the quantitative paradigm over the qualitative one. However, a third of the people surveyed consider that their advisory work is the particular and the institutional realities are important as part of their function.

In the function of educational advising, the objective prevails over the subjective, those of generalizations over the specificities.
I totally agree	27 %
Agree	30 %
Neither agree nor disagree	6 %
Disagreeing	17 %
Strongly disagree	20 %

Table 8: Tension Field 5: Qualitative versus Quantitative Paradigm

The sixth area of tension has to do with how the consultancy is perceived in its relationship with the institutional management and teaching teams. At one extreme is the perception of verticality that would characterize the previous educational supervision and whose remnant remains in the institutional actors. In this regard, Marcos Santos (2005) states that:

Verticality as a way of thinking and perceiving reality is, of course, an ideology, as the legitimizing thought of a society characterized by division and separation among its members. It implies the often-unconscious ordering that the subject makes of other people, a vertical ordering in which he and others are placed on a scale of ups and downs (p. 4).

This image comes from the authoritarian and imposing model that carried the control and evaluation attributions of educational supervision/inspection. It is transferred to the new advisory function as a sort of institutional inheritance within the educational system. The hierarchy acts as an argument ad hominen: the action of the advisory teams is vertical because it is the educational advisors who assume it. The perception is ratified by the external advice through administrative/pedagogical expertise, management of regulations and academic training of ministerial and zonal advisors. The internal educational advisors confirm that those who comply are the institutional authorities who hold the highest positions in the organizational stratification of the campus.

On the side of horizontality, we have the definitions established by the Ministry of Education (2013) in the MNASGE. In this document it is specified that "the educational consultancy is characterized by being a horizontal, democratic, participative process, respectful of the teacher's knowledge, focused on the educational institution, formative, professional and collaborative". (p. 11). The perspective in the transformation of the previous supervision is that the external consultancy does not become an administrative authority of the educational institutions. To this end, no powers were assigned for the granting of licenses or permits, control of attendance and punctuality, or individual evaluation of authorities or teachers. This gives a certain legal equality between authorities and educational advisory teams and avoids acts of coercion or dependence. Horizontality allows for the construction of otherness based on dialogue between these educational actors. It is "an opening to the other, which starts from the intimate conviction, at the deepest levels of the psyche, that the other is worth, that he or she can contribute something" (Santos, 2005, p. 6). This conviction is part of the consulting profile and it is ratified in the moments of induction to management and in their professional training. Otherwise, the other is not far away, since the people who do consulting generally have the previous function of being an institutional authority.

The responses of the advisory teams consulted consider that horizontal work is the one that predominates in the exercise of their function. Table 9 shows that 73% of the respondents "agree" and 17% "agree" (90% cumulatively) on this characteristic of the advisory function. Only 3 % say they "Disagree" and 7 % "Neither agree nor disagree". The relative legal equality and supportive attitude of most advisory teams has helped to cement this trait of horizontality. Counseling is at the height of an educational career that begins as a teacher and moves to the fulfillment of various responsibilities including that of institutional authority. This generates empathy, understood as the capacity to recognize the management of an authority or management team by the advisor.

In the educational advisory function, the idea of horizontal work prevails over vertical work with institutional authorities.
I totally agree	73 %
Agree	17 %
Neither agree nor disagree	7 %
Disagreeing	3 %
Strongly disagree	0 %

Table 9: Tension field 6: Verticality versus Horizontality

The seventh field of tension concerns the permanence or disappearance of the advisory function within the Ecuadorian educational system. The disappearance corresponds to the limited number of advisors that have official appointments by 2019, which are 146 at the national level. As indicated in Table 3, this number is far from the projected 2260, as only 6.5% would be covered. It is even far from having at least one advisor for each of the 1134 existing educational circuits. The other fact that corroborates this perception of the disappearance of the function is that this number of external advisors is decreasing significantly. This is due to the fact that in large part they are more or less close to retirement and their departures have not been replenished with other officials. The advisory teams also feel that their work is not sufficiently valued by the authorities at the central level. Even in some past administrations their role was questioned before the same minister of the sector. In addition, they have the perception that the other levels of the ministry, zones and districts, are unaware of the scope and responsibilities of educational counseling. These quantitative and evaluative data contribute to the lack of positioning of the advisory service within the national educational authority as a whole. It is likely that this situation is a consequence of the diversity of characterizations that frame educational counseling. Tamayo and Sandó (2011) point out several terms in this designation: "function, activity, actions, service, process, among others, which show substantial differences in criteria and reflect inconsistency in its conceptual and methodological apparatus" (p. 6). This dispersion would mean that, in the Ecuadorian case, the figure of the advisor and the function of educational counseling would be totally or partially invisible. Ignorance "of what counseling does" is commonplace at the central, zonal, and district levels of the national educational authority.

The continuity of the advisory function is assured by its importance within the educational system. The main aspect that stands out is its location within the structure. As "frontier actors", they are located between the central and district/circuit levels. This is a privileged locus: the team of officials acts as a mediator between the provisions of the central level and the requirements of the local level. The mediation capacity is validated and ratified by the administrative, pedagogical and academic expertise that is the profile of the advisor. This team allows that the dispositions, fundamentally the pedagogical ones, of the central level, can be executed in the educational institutions in an efficient and effective way. In addition to the pedagogical ones, the orientation that the advisory teams carry out in the other dimensions of the standards is characterized by its complexity. Standaert (2012) mentions that:

the axis from the central level to the local level is multidimensional. Some aspects are delegated to the local level and others are centralized, resulting again and again in a complex balance of aspects that are centralized and others that are defined at the local level. The number of aspects, their importance and the way they are organized defines the degree of centralization or decentralization of a system (p. 60).

Overcoming these tensions through a comprehensive understanding of institutional management in a dynamic environment with the central level requires the action of an advisory team. Maintaining the focus on the educational institution as the trend, with due flexibility and a balance with the provisions, is possible with advice. The challenge of the advisory team, as a team with the capacity to understand the norms and responsibilities of the educational actors, is to achieve institutional pedagogical autonomy. Its relevance lies in overcoming these contradictions. With the knowledge of its importance of mediation and relevance as a function, the counseling will have a support of stability within the system.

How do the advisors who answered the survey perceive their permanence within the system? Table 10 shows that a third of the advisors think that the provisions of the central level authorities do not point to the stability of the function in the system. The other third of respondents say "Neither agree nor disagree" which implies uncertainty. The final third perceives that there would be stability and that the educational advisory function will be maintained in the national educational structure. The majority expresses the dilemma of the stability of the function and therefore its own permanence in the job market. It can be presumed that this insecurity has levels of impact on the management of educational advising. The results indicate that if efficiency and effectiveness are to be achieved in the management of educational advising, firm communication is necessary among political decision-makers regarding its stability. This decision has a legal basis at the adjective and substantive level and in the importance that the advisory function has throughout the system. The MNASGE considers a transition time of up to five years to implement the function (MINEDUC, 2013).

During this period it will also be necessary to progressively advance in the implementation of all requirements, which means generating indicators for a computerized monitoring system and designing the system, developing and agreeing on quality standards, training educational institutions in self-evaluation procedures and training agents in the two functions included in the Model: consulting and educational auditing.

Decisions by state authorities suggest that the educational advisory function will remain stable rather than disappear.
I totally agree	20 %
Agree	13 %
Neither agree nor disagree	30 %
Disagreeing	30 %
Strongly disagree	7 %

Table 10: Tension field 7: Disappearance versus Stability

These requirements have generally been met. The importance of consulting within the system is defined as the entity that guides the institutions towards the achievement of educational quality standards. There are validated mechanisms for the selection of new advisors and processes for inducing those who earn the right to work to exercise the function. It is time for those who hold high positions in the national educational authority to make the political decision to implement the model according to the reality of the country.

6. Conclusions

The main conclusion of this study is that the central level prevails over the deconcentrated levels including the educational institution. Part of this prevalence involves the level of zonal coordination that for Quito and Guayaquil is the responsibility of the metropolitan sub-secretariats of education. The predominance corresponds to the determination of the processes and products that the educational advisory teams must execute in the schools and colleges.

The second conclusion is that it is possible to achieve a balance in areas of tension. The authoritarian imposition of any kind of level over another in educational and pedagogical matters is inappropriate for the system as a whole. Since the educational advisory teams are the main actors on the border between the different levels of the system, their actions bring equity to the structure. It is the consultancy that provides a balance between the determinations of the center and the realities of the periphery.

The third conclusion is that the advisory function is the only instance that can mediate at a high technical level between the levels of the system. The management space of the advisory teams at the level of educational institutions is differentiated. The products and processes determined by the central and zonal levels are oriented according to the institutional reality of each educational center. The educational advisory teams have the expertise to achieve this mediation that provides specific attention to the school institution. It is determined that one of the essential characteristics of the consultancy is its horizontality in relation to the institutional management teams. This results in their capacity for balanced and technical intervention between the different levels of the educational system, especially with schools.

As a fourth conclusion, it is established that there is a need for ministerial authorities as political decision makers within the system to ensure the permanence of the educational advisory function. Beyond the temporary circumstances, independently of their temporary passage through the ministry, the authorities at the central level must affirm the stability of the permanent officials. It implies the gradual expansion of the educational advisory teams and the restitution of those who leave due to resignation or retirement. The number of educational advisors can be four per district for a national total of 560. In this case, a minimum of two per district is required, which means that 280 educational auditors would be needed.

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Author

GUSTAVO VALLEJO-VILLACÍS. He obtained his high school teacher's degree, Bachelor's degree in Education Sciences, with a mention in pedagogy, and Master's degree in Intelligence Development, at the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja. Master's Degree in Equity, Gender and Sustainable Development, mention in Gender and Education, Universidad Técnica de Ambato.

He is currently a retired educational advisor to the Ministry of Education.