States of convivencia: Policies for learning to get along in/through education in El Salvador

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The State and education in Latin America: Foundations, fault-lines, and alternatives (Panel 2)

Proposal

Policies and programs on school convivencia – understood as peaceful coexistence or positive school environment – have been broadly promoted in Latin America in recent decades, particularly in contexts of high social violence, such as in El Salvador, Central America. In these conflictive settings, education is considered an essential instrument for strengthening peace and democracy, as well as teaching about human rights, gender equality, conflict resolution and other strategies for more equitable human relationships. In El Salvador, even though education was established as a way for achieving a more peaceful society in the post-war education reform in 1995, and more recent policies promote positive convivencia in schools, the country continues to struggle with alarming levels of violence and insecurity, calling into question how these polices are conceived on a macro level and then assimilated on a micro level.

This comparative study examines three recent convivencia initiatives in El Salvador. These initiatives have aimed, first, at organizing student governments, second, the prevention of bullying and, third, the promotion of gender equality. The basis for the presentation is three recent master’s theses, the final products of graduate students who have completed the “Education Policy and Evaluation” program at the Central American University (in San Salvador, El Salvador). Each of these theses explores convivencia practices at the micro level, i.e., in the school setting, and contrasts the resulting insights with the language and intentions of the official policy for each initiative, as promoted by the State. Betancur’s (2015) analytical framework of ideas, actors and institutions is used to examine the concept of convivencia in relation to policy formulation, policy implementation in schools, the cohesion of actors on different levels of the education system, and the institutional strengths and weaknesses of the State to formulate policies, to provide follow-up, and to evaluate polices.

The three studies review the policy framework and historical context and include fieldwork in schools on each of the convivencia initiatives (student governments, bullying, and gender equality), while providing important insights from teachers, administrators, and Ministry of Education staff on school dynamics that inform how macro policies play out at the micro policy level. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates how these kinds of policies—aimed at improving convivencia—are very complex and difficult to insert into existing school practices when promoted centrally by the State, particularly since they strive to change deep cultural habits and relationships, power structures of students and teachers, violence among peers and patriarchal practices. As the State, expressed through the Ministry of Education, endeavors to modernize and take on global agendas in what can be called “soft reforms” (a spin-off of the concept of soft skills), the dynamics of policy formulation and actual implementation at the school level demonstrate important findings on the nature of macro and micro policy in education, not to mention the all too frequent disjunctives between national and local actors—disjunctives which can be (and, in this presentation, will be) explained with reference to the nature of the State itself.

Author

• Pauline M. Martin, Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Cañas