Abstract

In Chile, after 30 years of liberalization of the system of higher education, teaching program offer has increased over other programs, which has been one of the factors in decreasing the requirements for enrollment. In this context and given the criticism of the quality of teacher training programs and skills they develop during the forming years, the question arises to identify, besides the quality of the training programs, what other elements influence the teaching program graduates’ employability conditions. In this sense, this essay operationalizes the construct employability, reviews different forms of measurement and develops a measure proposal. Among the main results it can be noted that the employability construct has a number of dynamic factors that have been classified into external and internal to the subject. The external ones describe emphasize prestige of the university, influence of the educational institution of origin and salary. The internal factors describe the influence of standardized tests results, adaptation to the context and perception of self-efficacy, among others. Factors described above, have been regularly observed independently, which in the opinion of the authors, would limit the options to analyze the phenomenon. In this sense, the proposal is to have a view which integrates these factors and consider contextual elements that permit studying employability as a complex construct, considering the influence of the environment.

Key words:  Teachers’ training; Employability factors; Pedagogy; Chile