title: Classrooms in Peace Within Violent Contexts: Field Evaluation of Aulas en Paz in Colombia.
abstract: Classrooms in Peace (Aulas en Paz) is an elementary school-based multicomponent program for prevention of aggression and promotion of peaceful relationships. Inspired by international programs and socio-emotional research, it includes (1) a classroom universal curriculum, (2) parent workshops and home visits to parents of the 10% most aggressive children, and (3) extracurricular peer groups of two aggressive and four prosocial children. Activities seek to promote socio-emotional competencies such as empathy, anger management, creative generation of alternatives, and assertiveness. A 2-year quasi-experimental evaluation was conducted with 1154 students from 55 classrooms of seven public schools located in neighborhoods with the presence of youth gangs, drug cartels, and high levels of community violence in two Colombian cities. Despite several implementation (e.g., about half of the activities were not implemented) and evaluation (e.g., randomization problems, large number of missing data, and changes between treatment and control groups) challenges, positive results were found in prosocial behavior and in reduction of aggressive behavior, according to teacher reports, and in assertiveness and reduction of verbal victimization, according to student reports. Furthermore, implementation cost (25 US dollars per student per year) was very low compared to other programs in developed countries. This study shows that the Classrooms in Peace program has an important potential to generate positive results and highlights the challenges of implementing and evaluating prevention programs in highly violent environments.
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. echaux@uniandes.edu.co.
authors.forename: Enrique
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3786-7129
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chaux
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
authors.forename: Madeleine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Barrera
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
authors.forename: Andrés
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Molano
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
authors.forename: Ana María
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Velásquez
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.|Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Melisa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Castellanos
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.|University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Maria Paula
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Chaparro
authors.affiliation: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.|University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO, USA.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bustamante
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003105:Colombia; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D012574:Schools; D014754:Violence
keywords: Aggression; Bullying; Citizenship competencies; Colombia; Socio-emotional competencies