EDUC 500

Assignment three
Research Article Critique

Student: Alejandro Lozano

Instructor: Dr. Oksana Bartosh

March 14th, 2019

Article criticized: “Citizenship

Competencies in the
Midst of a Violent Political Conflict:
The Colombian Educational Response”
By Enrique Chaux
The study
The article presents the particular approach of Colombia to the formation of Citizenship

Competencies in the educational system. It begins by presenting the challenges that the Colombian

context involves when it comes to citizenship formation. Colombia is presented as a country

heavily determined by a violent conflict. The direct or indirect effects of the kind of violence

connected to war on children is presented as the most evident obstacle to the successful

development of citizenship competencies. It is grounded on the assumption -scientifically

supported- that being exposed to a violent environment during childhood creates a greater risk for

the development of violent behaviors due to the impact of that violence in the construction of

cognitive and socioemotional skills.

Citizenship in this context is understood as the ability necessary for someone to live among others

in a peaceful way. Being able to live peacefully among others requires, therefore, a set of cognitive

and socioemotional skills. The role of education is providing these skills and the challenge of a

country like Colombia is the fact that the development of these skills is heavily threatened by the

violent situation of the country. In this context, the article presents the way in which the Colombian

Ministry of National Education has developed a program to massively try to construct these

competencies on children using the public educational system.

In short, the article identifies the different degrees of violence that are experienced in different

areas of Colombia (it claims that research shows that there is more violent behaviors on children

in the regions with more violence in Colombia) while it provides a brief summary of the political,

cultural and economical causes of this violence, so that the foreign reader -the article is written in

English for an American university- can have an idea of the sort of context in which the

pedagogical strategy is being implemented. Later, it provides a theoretical and scientific

presentation of the perspective of the program: how violent behavior is understood as the product

of the lack of certain psychological skills that in turn are the product of a violent context during

childhood. At this point the role of the educational system is clear: its duty is to provide children

with those skills.

The consequence of this cycle is what the author calls a culture of violence. Certain beliefs around

violence such as how violence is the most appropriate and effective response to social problems

expand throughout the population. These beliefs become a huge obstacle to the development of

socioemotional skills necessary to deal with stress and problems in life in a non-violent way. In

Chaux own words: Identifying the cognitive and socioemotional processes mediating the

relationship between exposure to violence and aggression is important because educational

prevention efforts can target competencies that can help break the cycle of violence. Therefore,

education programs should pay particular attention to developing cognitive and socioemotional

skills related to these variables. One example of this approach is the Colombian Program of

Citizenship Competencies. (Chaux, 2009, 86)

The program that is the object of the study

The study evaluates the extent to which one of the initiatives that is part of the Program of

Citizenship Competencies has succeeded, after one year (when the study was published), in its

fundamental goal: reducing violent behaviors which is, according to this logic, the path to

successful citizenship. That is why I think that the qualitative methodology or approach that is

used here is evaluation research. The program that is the object of that evaluation is called Aulas

en Paz (Classrooms in Peace). To do this, the author begins by presenting the institutional

framework in which the initiative is grounded in order to describe the scope of its goals. Legally

speaking, the Ministry of National Education can not provide mandatory programs that have to be
applied systematically throughout the country. The regional entities (called Secretaries of

Education) have freedom to implement their own programs. However, the Secretaries of Education

usually work in coordination with the Ministry (through the incentives that Ministry offer) to

implement the national programs.

All the theoretical framework described in the first part of this paper is defined in a set of guidelines

published by the Ministry which composed the Program of Citizenship Competencies. But these

guidelines offer a pure theoretical orientation. Aulas in Paz, on the other hand, is a specific program

which offer instructions, budget and professionals that go to a specific school to implement it. The

author, who is examining the impact of this program in some schools, is particularly concerned

with its qualitative dimensions. He tells us that there’s a national exam that all the students of the

country present and that quantitatively measures the evolution of Citizenship Competencies among

the student population. However, because the results of this program are visible fundamentally in

the level of behavior and its approach is through the generation of qualitative psychological skills,

he explores how the program has been implemented among teachers, their reception to the

initiative and the results among the students of the schools in which it was initially implemented.

Addressing and asking those populations directly was the way in which the data was collected.

Aulas en Paz is a class of citizenship competencies which addresses issues such as aggression,

conflicts and bullying by creating in students some positive emotional and cognitive dispositions

or competencies (such as empathy, anger management and assertiveness). According to the author,

the pedagogical approach is different than the traditional one of verbal lecture of high moral values

because it focuses in developing the necessary psychological competencies to deal with real life

situations in peaceful ways. After examining the results of the evaluation of the program the author

concludes that it reduced violence in most of the classrooms in which it was implemented to one-
fifth. The author recognizes also negative results in some schools but those ones are explained by

problems of teacher training (The stage of the program in which teachers received the methodology

was not done accurately enough) and implementation fidelity (The teachers introduced by

themselves personal variations during the implementation of the program). The author also points

out that the evaluations were conducted through one academic period so it is not clear the long-

term results, making emphasis in the fact that this kind of initiatives can only be fully evaluated

after many years (when the students actually become adult citizens).

My evaluation and criticism of the study

The great issue that appears when one analyses this article is positionality. The author is also the

creator of the program that is the object of the study. He also leaded the parallel studies that

measure this program, studies that he quotes constantly in his paper and that provide authority to

his claims. He is the main theorist and researcher behind the initiative of the Ministry and he is

writing for his university in U.S. where he did his PhD and in whom he developed his ideas.

Supported by an important American university (Harvard) and by the Colombian State and with a

project in his hands that is currently inspiring most of the public policy of the Ministry of

Education, would he be able to talk about the problems and issues of the program critically?

I am not judging him. I think he is doing a precious work for Colombia and is by far the most

important educational theorist of the country. However, it is impossible not to perceive a bias in

the way he interpreters the limitations that the program has faced in its application in field. Teacher

training and implementation fidelity are the causes that he identifies for the problems of the

program. By this he suggests that the program itself has no issues but that the problems appear

when the people that implement it take distance of its original meaning. The fact that he also

conducted all the studies that measure the impact of the program generates a conflict with the
access to its results, because we see them through his eyes, we receive them already interpreted by

him. He is also the main academic authority in all the guidelines that the Ministry provide for the

program at the same time that he is its main designer. He is the visible head of the project. I’m not

sure if he is the most appropriate person to measure its impact.

The intersection of politics and academia in which he is located, however, is a complicated

position. He is leading a project that represents one of the basics aspirations of the Colombian

society. He has the power to implement something that, after years of intense research in a top

American university, he considers the best way out of violence for his country. His work is not

purely academical though he is writing in an academic setting, with academic language and

academic evidence. He is also supporting a project, he wants to sell it so that it may be tried in a

long-term way regardless of the problems that can appear on the way (the project in the Ministry

receives money from USAID and he is writing for Harvard…). In a country in which policies are

usually abandoned after each presidential change this attitude is comprehensible.

In conclusion, my hypothesis is that this “study” represents also a clear political statement and is

aligned with a specific political agenda. It has data collection methods, it is grounded on other

studies that have serious data collection methods, it is scientifically supported and so on. But it

clearly serves a purpose and his author has visible goals that are impossible to ignore if one has

some knowledge of the identity and background of the author. I don’t think that this is necessarily

something negative. He is focused, at this point of his career, in action. He already published many

articles on the viability of building psychological skills to create peaceful citizens. Now that he is

in public policy it is necessary for him to give as much strength and credibility to his idea as

possible so that it may survive the governmental changes and the implementation problems. Every

study serves a purpose and, in my opinion, Chaux purpose is important.

 Bibliography

Chaux, E. (2009). Citizenship competencies in the midst of a violent political conflict: The

colombian educational response. Harvard Educational Review, 79(1), 84-93.