Between discourse and practice: A comparative analysis of rural multigrade education and technology policy in Chile and Colombia

This article presents a comparative study of public policies on rural multigrade education and the integration of educational technologies in Colombia and Chile. Drawing on a constructivist-critical perspective and a multiscalar qualitative design, it examines normative frameworks (macro level), institutional orientations (meso level), and rural teachers’ discourses gathered through an open-ended characterisation survey (micro level). The study aims to analyse how policy discourses on rural multigrade schooling and educational technology are framed, mediated, and interpreted across these three levels, and to explain why a binational comparison between Colombia and Chile is analytically relevant. The findings reveal a gap between normative discourse and the actual conditions of rural schools, as well as different degrees of institutional and pedagogical recognition of multigrade education across the two countries. The technology policies examined remain strongly shaped by concerns with access and provision, although the recent Chilean framework incorporates more explicit pedagogical and territorial measures. Across both contexts, however, the translation of these orientations into situated multigrade practice remains uneven. By contrast, rural teachers develop situated appropriation practices through which they reinterpret and reframe policies on the basis of their knowledge, institutional conditions, and lived experiences. The study concludes that rural multigrade education constitutes a specific form of educational organisation that requires differentiated policies designed from a territorial, participatory, and pedagogically relevant standpoint. It also highlights teacher agency as a critical dimension for rethinking the relevance and justice of public policy in rural contexts. More broadly, the article contributes to current debates on rural education policy by showing that the comparison between Colombia and Chile makes visible different degrees of institutional recognition, pedagogical specification, and contextual translation of policy in multigrade rural settings. • Rural multigrade schooling remains marginal in policy design. • Technology policy prioritises access, connectivity, and provision. • Teachers rework policy through situated pedagogical mediation. • Rural digital inequality includes pedagogical and territorial conditions. • Multigrade schooling requires explicit pedagogical recognition.