PhD Candidate
School of Education-The University of Queensland

r.schurchsantana@uq.edu.au
After training as a sociologist (Bachelor and Master’s degrees at P. Universidad Católica de Chile), Roberto has dedicated ten years of his professional experience to the field of education. Such expertise includes working at the Universidad Diego Portales for the development of their Quality Monitoring System and at the Ministry of Education of Chile, as Statistics Unit Coordinator and then as Head of the Research Centre, managing an AUD 3 million annual budget for the implementation of national and international studies and assessments.
Roberto started his PhD in October 2018, with UQ’s School of Education. His current project is comparative research about the “PIAAC-OECD” usage by policymakers in Australia, Chile and Singapore; an International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA) that measure the adult skills distribution and utilisation across OECD countries and other partner nations. This research is linked to his previous work at the Ministry of Education of Chile, where he took part in several OECD projects, including PIAAC. Roberto holds a UQ Research Training Scholarship and Becas-Chile. He is also a UQ Global Change Scholar 2019.
Area/Research interests: Comparative research, lifelong learning policies, global governance in education, educational reforms, ILSAs