Executive summary
When transforming an education system, commitment from various actors to advance shared priorities can allow for a reorientation around locally valued goals and ways of knowing. Relationally, commitment is made visible through participation or engagement, including showing up, voicing perspectives, taking responsibility, or co-deciding (Walsh 2010). The study used the term “individual commitment” to refer to the motivations and dispositions anchored in personal histories and experiences, and “collective commitment” to describe the shared orientations, agreements, and relational dynamics that emerge when actors align around a common educational purpose. Specifically, the study examined how enablers and barriers to commitment to an educational priority—established by an alliance between Local Education Management Units (UGELs) and Enseña Perú (EP) in two distinct Peruvian provinces—impacted provincial education systems transformation.
Grounded in a qualitative, case-based design using a Community-Based Research (CBR) approach (Kerry et al. 2003), the study was co-constructed with local advisory committees composed of students, teachers, parents, and local authorities. These committees actively shaped research variables, sampling criteria, and tools while also reviewing and interpreting emerging findings. This collaborative design process served as a space of transformation, demonstrating how commitment to both research and education systems transformation emerges through genuine participation and engagement.
Findings revealed that “commitment” is a relational, emotional, and situated process. In Ascope, there was broad agreement on the legitimacy and importance of children’s literacy, which mobilized rapid alignment around this as a local priority, but this strong agreement also limited the questioning of existing practices. In San Marcos, the idea of student leadership as a form of participation, which had been established as the provincial priority by the UGEL-EP alliance, was contested, which sparked dialogue around this type of participation and surfaced barriers for actors who have felt historically excluded from participation.
In each of these cases, commitment took shape through biographies, community narratives, and the symbolic construction of educational priorities. Commitment deepened when students, parents, and teachers felt recognized and saw their knowledge legitimized. Conversely, when actors were excluded from decisionmaking, commitment collapsed. Furthermore, educational priorities functioned as symbolic inputs that organized collective action but also shaped whose participation was legitimized. Lastly, local governance and leadership further shaped how commitment unfolded by influencing trust, role clarity, and supportive practices. When leadership was collaborative and valued diverse perspectives, it fostered lasting commitment. When institutions remained rigid, they risked creating exclusion and disengagement.
Ultimately, the study revealed that transformative educational change that is cohesive and community-driven requires deliberate attention to processes, power dynamics, and meaning-making. Strengthening commitment is not only a matter of inviting more actors to participate, but also of reconfiguring how priorities are constructed, how roles are negotiated, and how local knowledge is valued within education systems.
Authors
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Acknowledgements and disclosures
This research was made possible thanks to the commitment, trust, and active participation of many people and institutions across San Marcos and Ascope. We are especially grateful to the local advisory committees whose voices and reflections grounded this study in local realities. Their participation ensured ethical and contextual relevance while inspiring deeper questions and co-construction.
We also thank the teams from the Local Education Management Units (UGELs) of both provinces, whose support was crucial for this work. To all the students, teachers, families, community leaders, and school principals who shared their stories with generosity: your voices, though anonymous, resonate throughout every section of this report.
We acknowledge the contribution of the Enseña Perú team, whose leadership and sustained engagement made this research possible. The process was carried out by a committed team that included Ángela Bravo Chacón, Jose Antonio Alva Bacigalupo, Cinthya Valeria Pinchi Morey, and Ángela Lucía Huamaní Rodríguez, who led this work with clarity, care, and conviction. We give special thanks to the local teams—Deysi Alexandra Varillas Salazar, Loida Franco Cristobal, Joselyn Merly Vásquez Plasencia, Lucy Eliana Vallejos Benites, and Mónica Arizú Herrera Bendezu—for facilitating each step on the ground and nurturing connections with local communities.
We also recognize Franco Mosso Cobián for supporting the initial research vision, Aurora Escudero Llontop for accompanying its evolution, and Martín Vegas Torres, who served as the reviewer and whose insights strengthened the final version.
Finally, we are grateful to the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings and the Network for Education Systems Transformation (NEST) for their generous feedback and guidance throughout the process. This research is a testament to what becomes possible when research is understood as a shared and transformative journey. We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of our reviewer Zaynab Gates, 2025 Echidna Global Scholar at the Brookings Institution, whose detailed feedback strengthened the conceptual clarity and methodological rigor of this report. We extend our thanks to Jennifer L. O’Donoghue, senior fellow and deputy director of CUE, for editorial guidance and support during the review process.
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