Fostering Resilience Initiative: Colombia

The Fostering Resilience Initiative (FRI) and Educapaz,  an alliance of seven non-governmental, faith-based and academic organizations in Colombia, are collaborating to better understand the factors that impact school performance in Colombia and what mechanisms some schools use in order to promote institutional resilience. Our collaboration aims to define, identify, and measure the factors that characterize resilient schools in the context of adversity.

Our Approach

At the outset, our team developed assessment methods to identify high performing schools in conflict affected areas of Colombia and then identified quantitative indicators for ‘positive deviant schools’, which led to the identification of resilient schools.

In 2020, research teams will study these schools via in-depth qualitative methods and generate hypotheses about their positive practices and others that contribute to school resilience. This research will use a mixed-methods approach to identify factors that contribute to school resilience and generate hypotheses about the practices and processes that explain the presence of resilience in this context. 

  1. Semi-structured interviews with principals

  2. Teacher/Student Well-being Survey

  3. Focus group with teachers, students, and the community regarding protective or resilient assets in their schools.  These focus groups will use participatory ranking techniques to allow for both quantitative and qualitative data.

  4. School/Community Assets Mapping School Resilience Survey

Goals, Progress, and Impact

Project learning will be shared through a national working group on resilient schools and Educapaz’s advocacy report.

Resources

Research Brief April 2020: Resilience in Schools: Identifying Protective Factors in Colombian Schools