January 23, 2026 – 1:00 p.m. On-site and online session (Room M204, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy). Language: Spanish.
Expectations, diagnostics, and critical reading at university entry:
Notes for a dialogue between educational levels
Matías Núñez
University of the Republic
This talk presents the main contributions of the article “Critical reading among incoming students at the University of the Republic: a possible dialogue between expectations and empirical evidence”, which analyzes the relationship between curricular expectations in reading and the actual performance of students entering higher education in Uruguay. Based on the National Curricular Reference Framework (MCRN), which defines the graduate profile of upper secondary education, the paper examines assumptions about the reading competence that students should have developed by the end of compulsory education. These same definitions underpin the theoretical framework of the Reading Comprehension Diagnostic Assessment of the Academic Reading and Writing Program (LEA). On this shared basis, the presentation offers a comparative analysis between what is expected in the MCRN and the empirical results of a reading test administered to 7,803 incoming students at three regional university centers and five faculties of the University of the Republic. The focus is on critical reading as a key dimension for access to and persistence in tertiary studies, with the aim of discussing continuities, tensions, and challenges between secondary and higher education.
Bio
Matías Núñez holds a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Literature from the University of Salamanca. He worked as a language-area specialist at Uruguay’s National Institute for Educational Evaluation, where he participated in the design of reading assessments for primary and secondary education. He is currently part of the team responsible for the University of the Republic’s entry diagnostic test, which annually assesses around 8,000 students. He coordinates the publications of the Academic Unit of the Vice-Rectorship for Teaching and is a member of the editorial committee of Intercambios, the higher education journal of that vice-rectorship. He is also a curator of visual arts exhibitions and a writer.
