Dr. Pedro Pineda

Based on our interviews with professors and administrators at 18 universities in three countries, we discuss how SET diffused in all the studied universities and how SET was translated and edited differently according to different sets of statements. SET diffused from the US, where it was initiated by students in the 1950s and later adopted by universities in the 1970s. German and Colombian universities only imported SET later, in the 2000s, and in the German public sector it is still not mandatory for all courses. SET gains legitimacy through different discourses, for instance, the discourse on the empowerment and rights of students. SET also connects to the discourse on increasing rationality that extends to the metrification of teaching.

We found that: (1) Attention to SET originated in the US in the 1970s, spreading to German-speaking countries in the mid-1990s and continuing in China and Latin America in the early 2000s. (2) SET is commonly viewed as a control tool deserving methodological improvement, while bias is debated in the US. We also found local trajectories: (3) Whereas in the US and Latin America SET is primarily seen as a management tool, German-speaking and Chinese authors reflect more on improving teaching. Chinese scholars consider SET a valid instrument for state control associated with artificial intelligence. Also, (4) SET is commonly used in medical education in the US and the German-speaking region and in physical education in China.

Policy instruments such as the National Policy for Reducing Substance Use (Ministerio de Protección Social, 2007) and the National Law on School Coexistence (CRC, 2013) follow a preventive approach to address the problem of alcoholism. However, neither national public bodies nor schools often have access to information on prevention programs based on scientific evidence. In this article, the international literature on alcohol abuse prevention programs in the school setting is reviewed. It was found that the most robust programs are characterized by (1) differentiating between abuse and use, (2) addressing the problem of addiction to different psychoactive substances, (3) relating alcohol to overall social-emotional problems.

Previous research has shown how peace education (PE) mutates according to socio-political and curricular/didactic traditions, but we still need to know how PE disseminates at the school level. We surveyed teachers from 12 rural schools of the violent Amazon region of Colombia where a national Law made PE mandatory in schools and universities. Teachers working on schools affected by the armed conflict have high expectations about PE. Teachers also have opposing views about the history of PE. We could not find a systematic pattern of responses about the pedagogical principles or theoretical sources of inspiration of PE. We discuss the differences between present PE reforms and the previous tradition related to classical Education.