HundrED is thrilled to announce a partnership with Teach For All and its local partner, Enseña por Colombia, to document how holistic leadership is encouraged in Urabá, a region in Colombia with a long history of conflict. Through this collaboration, we captured the implementation of their Action Learning framework and how it is supporting social-emotional development and holistic learning in schools in Colombia.
"At first, it felt like extra work. But once we shifted the narrative, we saw it as a tool for growth," says Luís Ramos, Deputy Director for Teacher Training Programmes at Enseña por Colombia, describing his first moments of introducing a new resource to his team.
The Teach For All network, spanning more than 60 countries, focuses on impactful, evidence-based strategies to support students' holistic development and foster leadership among everyone in the classroom. Their Action Learning approach combines real-time implementation and feedback loops to iterate interventions to ensure classrooms and systems are developing students holistically.
A localised project rooted in social emotional learning
In 2022, Teach For All, Enseña por Colombia (ExC) and the Universidad de los Andes designed a project tailored to the Colombian context. With a strong focus on social-emotional learning (SEL), the initiative aimed to equip both teachers and students with the skills needed to create meaningful change in their communities.
The approach was multifaceted:
- Partners created a repository of over 100 social emotional learning (SEL) practices
- Teachers and fellows received training on integrating the practices into everyday teaching
- Continuous feedback was gathered from practitioners to iterate and improve the SEL programme further.
- The implementation was paired with an academic study to evaluate how well the adaptation supported teachers and impacted students’ SEL skills and academic outcomes.
"Once my team started believing in the process, our progress accelerated. When one coordinator shared their positive experience, it encouraged others to do the same. Now, when I hear a coordinator remind teachers about the importance of self-leadership, I know this change is permanent," Ramos reflects.
See it in action!
We’re excited to share the short documentary that introduces the project and gives voices to the educators leading the work:
Watch the Mini Documentary (10 min)
Explore the project further:
Through this project, we set out to document how the Action Learning framework was localised, tested and adapted in practice by Colombian educators - and to share and celebrate the lessons learned with the wider education community.
- Learn about Teach For All's Action Learning framework on HundrED.org
- Get inspired by Enseña por Colombia's experiences of implementing the framework and read first-person testimonials from educators
And you can also dive into the academic research conducted about this work on Teach For All's website.
