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PurposeThis study explores links among marianismo, girls' mobility and sexuality, and child marriage among adolescent girls in rural areas of Honduras.MethodsWe analyze quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2008-2016 for a longitudinal cohort study of rural Honduran adolescent girls. These data include interviews (n = 10 married before age 18) and surveys (n = 563; 155 married early). We also use qualitative data from focus groups in 2016 that included students, parents, teachers, and community members (n = 120).ResultsWe find that girls who scored higher on a scale of traditional gender norms were more likely to marry early. Furthermore, our qualitative findings indicate that girls experienced control over their mobility and their sexuality because of rigid gender norms prevalent in their communities. The control girls experience clashes with undergoing psychosocial changes that are associated with increased desire for autonomy and intimacy as well as increased awareness of their sexuality. In some cases, girls believed that marriage was better than staying in their restrictive households, and/or they viewed marriage as the only way to have a romantic relationship.DiscussionRigid gender norms that promote excessive regulation of girls' behavior and sexuality influence girls' decision-making processes to enter child marriage. Educational initiatives that challenge sexist gender norms and explain and normalize attraction and intimacy during adolescence should be a central component of child marriage prevention programming for adolescents, parents, and community members.

PURPOSE:Child marriages and unions can infringe upon adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH). Interventions increasingly promote strategies to transform social norms or foster the agency of adolescent girls. Recent empirical studies call for further understanding of how social norms and agency interact in ways that influence these practices, especially in contexts where girls' agency is central. METHODS:A secondary cross-case analysis of three qualitative studies (in Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras) was conducted to inform the investigation of how norms and agency may relate in sustaining or mitigating child marriage. RESULTS:Social norms dictating how girls/young women and how men should act indirectly led to child marriages and unions. The data showed that (1) social norms regulated girls' acceptable actions and contributed to their exercise of "oppositional" agency; (2) social norms promoted girls' "accommodating" agency; and (3) girls exercised "transformative" agency to resist harmful social norms. CONCLUSIONS:Research should advance frameworks to conceptualize how social norms interact with agency in nuanced and context-specific ways. Practitioners should encourage equitable decision-making; offer confidential, adolescent-friendly AYSRH services; and address the social norms of parents, men and boys, and community members.

This article examines intersections between schooling, child marriage, and adolescent pregnancy in a longitudinal, mixed-methods study of Honduran girls. It explores: (1) girls' enrollment and dropout of school patterns and how these relate to timing of marriage and/or childbirth; (2) the factors associated with dropout, early marriage, and/or early childbearing; and (3) reenrollment patterns after marriage/childbirth. We find that household income in early adolescence predicts school dropout, early union, and early childbearing. Most girls discontinued their studies due to lack of financial resources or no longer wanting to be a student rather than due to marriage or motherhood. Only a small percentage return to school. This study can inform the timing and nature of efforts to protect girls and increase their chances of successfully completing secondary school, delaying marriage, and preventing early pregnancy.

This research examines the connections between adolescent marriage, agency, and schooling in rural Honduras. Through an in-depth qualitative case study, we address the questions: (1) In what ways, if any, do girls exercise agency in their decision to marry? (2) How might education enhance girls’ agency, expanding their choice sets and delaying the age of marriage? We argue that a lack of understanding of the decision-making processes of young girls impedes the design and implementation of interventions to address early marriage. Our in-depth, qualitative case study allows us to document how the agency that girls exercise is simultaneously thin, opportunistic, accommodating, and oppositional. Stemming from these findings, we suggest that schools can enhance girls’ agency through a number of policies including: (1) the provision of resources to design and implement teacher training and curriculum development; (2) flexible enrollment policies and innovative/non-traditional educational delivery (particularly via mobile device); and (3) linking educational efforts with those that create employment opportunities or financial assistance to attend university.

This article proposes a conceptual framework for how education can promote adolescent girls' empowerment and, by mapping the field, highlights promising examples of empowering education programs. We conclude by identifying both research and programmatic opportunities for the future that will harness the expertise of a range of specialists from the interdisciplinary fields of gender studies and adolescent development in collaboration with experts from the fields of education, health, and labor.

This article evaluates the impact and cost-effectiveness of offering an innovative middle school model--the Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (SAT)--to Honduran villages instead of traditional middle schools. We identified a matched sample of villages with either type of school and collected baseline data among primary school graduates eligible to enroll in middle schools. After 2 years, the test scores of children residing in SAT villages were 0.2 standard deviations higher than children in other villages, though the per-student cost in SATs was at least 10% lower than traditional schools. The article is one of the few studies to rigorously evaluate a scaled-up instructional reform in a poor country, implemented with an alternative model of teacher recruitment and contracting.

This article examines the relationships between child marriage, agency, and schooling in rural Honduras. Through an in-depth qualitative case study, we address the following questions: (1) In what ways, if any, do girls exercise agency in their decision to marry? (2) How might education enhance girls' agency, expanding their choice sets and delaying the age of marriage? We argue that a lack of understanding of the decision-making processes of young girls impedes the design and implementation of interventions to address child marriage. Our in-depth, qualitative case study allows us to document how the agency that girls exercise is simultaneously thin, opportunistic, accommodating, and oppositional. Returning to Ahearn's notion of agency as the socioculturally mediated capacity to act (2001a, 112), our findings suggest that for education to enhance adolescent girls' agency it must transform the sociocultural conditions that constrain their actions, targeting individual girls, families, and communities.

While previous research has focused on the relationship between education and women's empowerment in the public sphere, their empowerment in the private sphere has been less fully developed in empirical studies. Drawing on a theoretical model of change in marital relationships, this article examines how women who participated in an innovative secondary education program in rural Honduran Garifuna communities were able to negotiate more equitable roles in their intimate relationships. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

This article presents results from a qualitative study on how the Honduran secondary education programme, "Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial" (SAT), attempts to "undo gender" (Deutsch 2007: 122) by encouraging students to rethink gender relations in their everyday lives in a way that reflects their increased consciousness of gender equality. My findings suggest that SAT increased women's gender consciousness and this heightened their desire for change in the domestic sphere. In some instances, women were able to negotiate a new sharing of responsibilities with their spouses. There are several features of SAT that make it a transformative innovation in education: (1) gender is mainstreamed into the curriculum; (2) gender is linked with the larger concept of justice; (3) students engage in reflection, dialogue and debate; (4) teachers are given the opportunity to reflect critically on their understanding of gender in professional development sessions; and (5) it emphasises that undoing gender requires change among individuals and in social structures such as the family.

Evaluators sometimes wish for a Fairy Godmother who would make decision makers pay attention to evaluation findings when choosing programs to implement. The U.S. Department of Education came close to creating such a Fairy Godmother when it required school districts to choose drug abuse prevention programs only if their effectiveness was supported by "scientific" evidence. The experience showed advantages of such a procedure (e.g., reduction in support for D.A.R.E., which evaluation had found wanting) but also shortcomings (limited and in some cases questionable evaluation evidence in support of other programs). Federal procedures for identifying successful programs appeared biased. In addition, the Fairy Godmother discounted the professional judgment of local educators and did little to improve the fit of programs to local conditions. Nevertheless, giving evaluation more clout is a worthwhile way to increase the rationality of decision making. The authors recommend research on procedures used by other agencies to achieve similar aims. (Contains 1 note.)

This article aims to clarify the relationship between education and women's empowerment. Drawing from qualitative data collected in a study of four Garifuna villages on the north coast of Honduras, it argues that education can trigger the empowerment process if it expands women's knowledge and understanding, self-confidence and awareness of gender equity. However, not all education programs will do this. The program studied, "Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial," has several unique features that appear to foster the empowerment process and are not traditionally present in Latin American secondary schools. We must carefully consider the content and pedagogy of educational programs that attempt to promote women's empowerment, rather than assuming that education and empowerment automatically go hand-in-hand. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 15 notes.)

This article is not about local governance of education "per se," but rather whether education can be used as a tool to foster citizen participation, particularly that of women. It examines how education might empower women, who are often excluded from local, regional and national governance, to participate in public life. It draws on data from a qualitative study conducted in Honduras on how the innovative Latin American secondary education programme, "Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial" (SAT), promotes women's empowerment. In this article, the author first describes the SAT programme and the methodology used in this study. She then argues that SAT teaches students how to think critically and imagine a future that is better than the present. SAT also seems to foster in students a variety of personal virtues or values, such as respect for self and others. SAT students are able to practice democratic deliberation in the classroom, and some respondents reported that because of this they gained the self-confidence needed to participate in public spaces outside the classroom. In addition to these positive findings, there are tensions and challenges. The first is that there is little data on the overall academic quality of the SAT programme in both Colombia and Honduras. Literacy and numeracy skills, as well as critical and independent thinking are prerequisites of meaningful civic participation, and yet people know very little about the programme's performance in these areas. Furthermore, not all women seem to have benefited equally from the programme, particularly those who participated for 2 years or less. Finally, women's participation in community groups was often small-scale and not connected to other social institutions. She concludes by highlighting the implications of these findings for academics, policy-makers, and practitioners interested in how to foster citizen participation through education. (Contains 1 table and 4 notes.)

In an effort to promote evidence-based practice, government officials, researchers, and program developers have developed lists of model programs in the prevention field. This article reviews the evidence used by seven best-practice lists to select five model prevention programs. The authors' examination of this research raises questions about the process used to identify and publicize programs as successful. They found limited evidence showing substantial impact on drug use behavior at posttest, with very few studies showing substantial impact at longer follow-ups. The authors advocate additional long-term follow-up studies and conclude by suggesting changes in the procedures for developing best-practice lists. (Contains 3 tables and 6 endnotes.)

Investigators of the influence of evaluations on policy decisions have noted three main routes to influence: instrumental, conceptual, and political/symbolic. This study, an inquiry into the effect of evaluations of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program, found a fourth main way that evaluations exert an influence: imposed use. The Safe and Drug Free Schools office of the U.S. Department of Education obliged districts to select a program that met its "Principles of Effectiveness," which most districts construed to mean that the program had to be on the department's approved list. Because results of D.A.R.E. evaluations repeatedly showed that D.A.R.E.'s effectiveness on knowledge and attitudes was neither sustained nor led to lower use of drugs, D.A.R.E. did not make the "lists." Hence, many districts dropped or scaled back D.A.R.E. This kind of imposed use is likely to become more common when government agencies make greater demands for accountability.