Reforming pedagogical practice in Peruvian schools: the promise and downfall of a whole school intervention

• In Event: Experiences, contexts and data use: Revisiting the study of education policy implementation in comparative and international education

Proposal

This paper discusses the case of Soporte Pedagogico (SP), a comprehensive programme to reform pedagogical practice in Peruvian primary schools (Balarin, 2023 in press). It combines insights from an evaluation of the programme’s implementation (Balarin et al., 2016), and from a recent study of the political economy of education policy making in Peru (Balarin & Saavedra, 2023) – both of which included extensive documentary analysis, as well as individual and group interviews. The need to reform pedagogical practice had been in the Peruvian education policy agenda since the 1990s (Bing Wu, 2001; Ministerio de Educación, 1993). Various attempts focused on curriculum reform and teacher training, mostly through top-down strategies, failed to effect desired changes. In 2013, an innovative programme named SP devised a strategy to work on changes from within schools and intervening in several key areas at once. It combined teacher mentoring with training workshops, strategies to strengthen pedagogical leadership, to support students lagging-behind and to promote parental involvement in learning. A year into its rollout evaluations showed areas for improvement but also great promise in SP. Three years later it had all but disappeared. The paper seeks to explain how this happened, highlighting the challenges of promoting reforms in countries with weak states and institutions.

Author

• Maria Balarin, GRADE