The Impact of Restorative Practices on Violence, Psychological Well-being, and Social Cohesion in Bogotá’s Schools

The intervention is rooted into Restorative Practices, and it consist of 4 sessions:
1. Sensitization on school violence and conflict dynamics
2. Empathy and perspective-taking, identifying the different roles in a conflictive situation.
3. Emotional self-awareness and self-regulation, identifying my role in current conflictive situations
4. Assertive and cooperative conflict resolution exercises and tools provision.
Delivery: Facilitated by trained staff from the Secretary of Education. Each session lasts 1.5 hours. Schools and head teachers are provided advice and encouraged to do folllow-up activities with the classroom.
Timing: Four-session intervention delivered over a 2–4 weeks period.

2025-05-01

2026-04-30

- Peer-to-peer violence (admin reports and self-reports)
- Psychological well-being (survey-based scales)
- Social cohesion (survey network analysis, sense of belonging, games measuring prosociality)

Variables will be aggregated into indices based on their factor loadings derived from exploratory factor analysis, and standarized with respect to the control group.

- Socio-emotional skills: Empathy, self awareness and socially responsible decision-making
- Learning, academic performance and educational attainments.
- Cognitive performance: Attention, working memory, processing speed, inhibitory control, among others.

Variables will be aggregated into indices based on their factor loadings derived from exploratory factor analysis, and standarized with respect to the control group.

Design: Each sampled school nominates a secondary (7-9 grade) classroom identified as ‘in conflict’ by each school board. Classrooms are then randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, using stratification based on geographic location and the school’s violence index.

H1: RP reduces peer-to-peer violence.
H2: RP improves students’ psychological well-being.
H3: RP improves classroom social cohesion.
H4: RP improves human capital (learning, cognitive performance, and educational attainment).

Mechanisms
Empathy, self-awareness and responsible decision-making.

Heterogeneous effects

Based on the theoretical framework, it is essential to examine the differential impacts contingent upon students’ roles within in-class conflicts, especially to track potential negative effects in terms of re-victimization, stigmatization (aggressors), and learnig (bystanders).
H6: The intervention will have stronger positive effects in students suffering from violence (minorities, pre-intervention victims), while not affecting bystanders.
Drawing on qualitative findings, there is an expectation that violence may re-emerge in the absence of a sufficiently positive environment.
H7: The intervention will work better in less violent school environments.


Data Collection
Sources:
- Alert System (violence and behavioral incidents) - Administrative data
- School Environment Survey - Administrative data
- Enrollment, grades, attendance, discipline reports - Reported from schools
- Endline survey with all the students in each sampled classroom and lab-in-the-field games.
Timing:
- Baseline: Existing admin data. This includes demographic characteristics for all students in the sampled classroom and the role in current in-classroom conflict (victim, aggressor, bystander).
- Endline: Collected 3 months after intervention. And administrative data up to 2 years after intervention.

Not available

Real time randomization done in a computer

Unit of randomization: School level. In schools with multiple shifts i.e. with classes on morning and afternoon shifts, each shift is considered an independent unit.

Yes

Sample Size: 300 classrooms total — 150 treatments, 150 control — from 300 schools.

All students in sampled classrooms will be interviewed (N=~9000, with 30 students per classrooms in average)

120 contro, 120 treatment.

MDEs based on 2023 data suggest 0.07–0.13 SD detectable effects on primary outcomes with 120 treated and 120 control classrooms, ~30 students per class, given significance level of 0.05 and statistical power of 0.80. To increase statistical power, the experiment will include a pure control arm that won’t be invited to the intervention nor surveyed. I will test impacts using administrative data (which includes violence and educational attainments).