Reconciling the gap between government-driven interventions and local realities in Colombia and El Salvador.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Formal education policy is a hypothesis about what should occur in order to achieve educational aims. The hierarchical nature of enactment through national education systems, however, can create dissonance between official policy and what really happens in classrooms and school communities. The central, top-down nature of determining policy agendas, when not congruent with local dynamics and needs, may lead to resistance and adaptations in enactment (Bell, 2020). It is known that several factors are key for successful policy enactment on the school level, such as principal leadership (Fullan & Kirtman 2019), parents as partners (Bell, 2020), and policy communication (Honig, 2006), among others. However, what is less studied is how schools and local actors respond to and confront their needs independently of macropolicy or national government directives.

This panel will present a bottom-up approach to analyzing education policy, that is, what happens at the school and local education community level on pressing issues of education quality in Colombia and El Salvador. Beyond analyzing the relationship between macro and micro policy, this panel will reveal ways that educational communities confront and resolve their educational needs by taking into account local perspectives and resources when official policy does not address their needs or interest. Rather than romanticizing or deferring to community-led solutions, the call is for better integration of policy levels and the empowerment of local school communities to respond and adapt to the specific needs of the context. Such integration across policy levels will be presented in this panel, using an intervention framework based on contextualization, participatory actions, and social relations (AUTHORS, 2022).

Sub Unit

• Latin America SIG

Chair

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

Individual Presentations

• The experience and needs of mothers of school-age children during the Covid-19 emergency in Colombia. - Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii

• Education in risk and conflict situations. responses of schools in contexts of gang presence in El Salvador. - Pauline M. Martin, Independent Consultant

Discussant

• Kristin M Rosekrans, Consultant/Self-employed