Bernardita Tornero

Bernardita is an educational psychologist who obtained her PhD in education at King’s College London UK. Her doctoral research allowed her to consolidate her academic interest and knowledge in initial teacher training as a way of finding the key points that will allow to improve educational quality by decreasing the existing gaps between low- and high-income sectors.

In 2014, she became faculty at the School of Education at Universidad de los Andes Chile, where she has been teaching, conducting research, and holding academic positions ever since. At this time, she is the Head of the School of Education.

Most of her academic career has been dedicated to understanding the complexity of training future teachers effectively to transfer that knowledge to initial teacher training programs in Chile. For that reason, in 2023 she came as a visiting scholar to CSET at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, to collaborate in bridging teachers' education research and practice.

In addition to her academic career, she has led the creation of successful educational projects with high social impact. One of them is the foundation of a free charter school called Ayelen, that serves more than 1,200 low-income students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade.

Working in diverse educational contexts has given her the conviction that preparing effective teachers during their initial teacher training programs is one of the most powerful ways of constructing more equitable and just societies.