A systemic look at educational development programs: two perspectives on a recent Colombian experience

There has been considerable agreement among researchers and practitioners, working on development issues, that unless we improve the education infrastructure in less‐developed countries they will never be able to improve their development indices. Innumerable educational reform programs in many different countries, over the last century, have been driven by this aim but few have had the desired impact on local educational systems in terms of coverage, quality and equity. Taking as an example a project recently undertaken in Colombia, we argue in this paper that a significant reason for this may well be the inappropriate theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches underpinning the majority of educational reform programs.