Digital abilities, between instrumentalization and empowerment: a discourse analysis of Chilean Secondary Technical and Vocational public policy documents

It is argued that developing digital abilities is key for today's knowledge society. They facilitate engaging with pervasive information communication technologies and manipulating information. Governments have invested vastly in formal education aimed at developing digital abilities. Policies and directives driving this venture need to be examined. Otherwise, their potential risks being thwarted. Grounded in concepts derived from Laclau and Mouffe, five public policy documents central to Chile's Secondary Vocational Education and Traning (S-TVET) system underwent a synchronic heuristic discourse analysis as understood under relational-ontology. Findings indicate that all analysed documents are articulated with a myth of an information society. Additionally, two prominent discourses were identified: an instrumentalization discourse and an empowerment discourse. When referencing S-TVET, however, the most salient discourse is that of instrumentalization. Instrumentalization discourses render digital abilities under a narrow corporate fixed set of decontextualised skills, and risk thwarting their potential.