PRIMED is an evidenced-based model for designing and implementing effective character education in schools. It is based around the principles of Prioritization, Relationships, Intrinsic Motivation, Modeling, Empowerment, Developmental Pedagogy. It was developed by Dr. Marvin Berkowitz.

This project, led by Henry May and co-directed Nicole Bruskewitz at Coschool, seeks to demonstrate that the PRIMED Colombia character development program can be implemented effectively in Spanish by local facilitators and make a positive impact on public schools, their leadership teams, staff, and students.

With previous project-level funding from TWCF, Coschool partnered with Dr. Berkowitz to pilot an English-language version of PRIMED with leadership teams from 8 bilingual private schools in Bogotá. The pilot was shown to increase participants' understanding, appreciation, and practice of character education. In addition, the team created a virtual training course which helped overcome pandemic-related challenges and better positioned the program for delivery at scale.

Under the leadership of Coschool and Dr. Berkowitz, local facilitators now aim to deliver the PRIMED Colombia program to 60 school leaders from ten public schools across Bogotá. The model will be delivered via in person PRIMED institutes, along with ongoing professional development support over a period of two years. The team will make use of virtual PRIMED materials as well as complementary resources hosted on the Edumocion platform. A key output of the program will be the creation and implementation of school character action plans by participating leaders.

The program will be periodically evaluated for relevance, acceptability, feasibility/applicability, contextualization and adaptations, targeted outcomes, and unintended consequences. The team will also measure improvements in school climate and violence in alignment with the Ministry of Education’s metrics.

Towards the end of the project, the team will host a series of events with the education and policy community to disseminate the results and will also publish articles in Spanish language open access journals. The project has strong support from national and local secretaries of education, as demonstrated by the letters of support. Over the long term, the aim is for the PRIMED Colombia resources and methodology created and tested via this project to be adopted by government agencies for nationwide implementation.

Image courtesy Coschool