Entre las desigualdades y la justicia restaurativa: experiencias de escuelas rurales colombianas: Experiences of Colombian Rural Schools

Effects of armed conflict on Colombian rural education are a complex mix of individual symptoms and social syndromes that require collective healing processes. This study aimed to understand how rural school directors have subjectively processed the conflict’s effects, amidst territorial inequalities, following the 2016 Peace Agreement in Colombia. A phenomenological approach was employed to gain insight into the lived experiences of the participants, in relation to the problems of world-of-life. Fifteen rural school directors participated in semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Notably, the findings highlight the rural directors’ resignification of the conflict’s effects, based on sensitive memory, and the emotional impacts of the conflict. This has led to changes in the dynamics of rural school management, oriented towards building territorial peace and promoting restorative justice. Territorial management emerges from a collective construction of territories to cope with the structural violence and impact of territorial inequality.