From Seed to Forest: The Formalization Paradox in Scaling Nonformal Education in Colombia

Abstract

This dissertation examines how nonformal education (NFE) programs scale by following one organization's nearly two-decade trajectory of growth, contraction, and institutional change. Tiempo de Juego (TdJ), a Colombian foundation founded in 2006 in the informal settlement of Cazucá, Soacha, has grown from a Saturday soccer session into a three-region operation serving several thousand children annually through sport, arts, leadership training, and community programming. Using a qualitative case study design grounded in five weeks of fieldwork across multiple Colombian sites, twenty-four semi-structured interviews, extensive document analysis, and participant observation, the study asks how TdJ grew, how scaling decisions were made and by whom, what forces shaped the process, and what its experience implies for other nonformal education programs.

The dissertation reconstructs TdJ's trajectory chronologically across four eras, from the first games in Cazucá through methodological formalization, regional expansion into Santa Marta, Ciénaga, and Timbiquí, and the prolonged aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. It then reorganizes the same evidence thematically around the four research questions, drawing connections across eras, sites, and roles to surface patterns the chronological narrative alone could not isolate. Attention is paid throughout to the communities that shaped the methodology, the monitors and coordinators who carried it, and the funding architecture that enabled and constrained the organization's choices.

Drawing on Gramsci, Freire, Foley, and Mickelsson's scaling-as-learning framework, the dissertation engages the scaling literature's dominant taxonomies and argues for closer attention to the human and relational dimensions of growth that current frameworks tend to overlook. It contributes an in-depth, longitudinal case of NFE scaling in the Colombian context, extends existing theory through a set of proposed refinements, and offers the forest as an alternative to the engineering metaphors dominant in the field, reframing NFE scaling as cultivation rather than replication.