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TREES Teaching Module: What Does It Mean to Teach with Equity?

Closing Session of the 2026 Teaching for Equity Module.

Teaching for equity is not just about incorporating new content into the classroom. It also involves reviewing one’s own teaching practices, learning from others’ experiences, and collaborating with fellow teachers to, new ways of understanding and addressing inequalities. It was under this premise that the TREE Teaching ModuleS, a training program certified by the Office of Continuing Education at the Universidad de los Andes that brings together teachers from different educational levels to rethink how equity can become a guiding principle throughout education.

Rather than simply providing educational tools, the module offers a peer-learning experience. Through a Community of Practice, teachers from schools, universities, and other educational settings exchange experiences, reflect on their own methodologies, and design curriculum proposals aimed at strengthening a critical and ethical approach to teaching about equity.

Inspired by the approach of Teaching for Understanding From Harvard University's Project Zero, the module invites you to to view teaching as a process of transformation. This is reflected in the module’s structure: the first session addresses teaching for equity; the second focuses on comprehension goals and performance; the third is dedicated to designing instructional sequences with an equity perspective; the fourth explores strategies for assessing learning from an equity perspective; and the fifth focuses on the presentation and evaluation of curriculum designs. However, the main learning does not arise solely from the content, but rather from the conversations that develop among teachers with different backgrounds, disciplines, and contexts.

Closing Session of the "Teaching for Equity 2025" Module.

The first edition brought together 21 teachers from various educational institutions. Over the course of five sessions, dialogue and feedback helped broaden the perspectives through which each participant understood their own teaching practice. To Lorena Suárez, a professor of Government and Public Policy at Los Nogales School, said that one of the module’s greatest benefits was precisely the opportunity to learn from other educational contexts.

“This space offered me multiple perspectives on education. It was very enriching to receive feedback from colleagues in other contexts. It helped me see the challenges involved in teaching to overcome inequalities and the importance of doing so among peers, with openness and dialogue.”

Her experience reflects one of the guiding principles of the module: equity is also fostered when teachers find opportunities to listen, discuss, and collectively enrich their practices. As she put it, Johanna Gómez, a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,

“Stepping away from the university environment for a bit allowed me to see other ways of teaching and other areas of knowledge. Meeting high school teachers helped me broaden my perspective, recognize other voices, and enrich my own practice through diversity.”

This diversity of perspectives was further strengthened during the second edition, held in 2026, in which the following participated: 43 teachers from different educational levels and contexts. The presence of teachers from elementary, middle, and higher education turned the workshop into a space where diverse experiences were discussed and complemented one another, allowing the questions and challenges of some to enrich the reflections of others.

The module’s conclusion highlighted this collective effort. Each participant presented, in poster format, a pedagogical proposal developed throughout the process and received feedback from the other teachers to strengthen it. More than just a presentation of results, this exercise became a space for dialogue where each proposal received feedback thanks to this community.

Check out the highlight reel from the last session of the module:

The activities carried out demonstrated how equity can be addressed from multiple disciplines and contexts. Hyca – Diana Apolá López Bojacá, an arts educator at Menstrure, designed Biodiversity and Cycles, a project that uses medicinal plants to reflect on care” ”It's precisely about how we can use plants and how this can also enable us to propagate them so that we can gain greater autonomy when it comes to our health and the use of medicinal plants."

From another perspective, Sebastián García, a historian and social sciences professor, presented Pork Rinds in Colombia, an activity designed to encourage reflection on agricultural inequalities and the historical challenges of land distribution in the country.

Although the topics were different, both proposals shared the same goal: to translate equity into concrete learning experiences in the classroom. As Sebastián García pointed out, the module demonstrated that “Through collective efforts, we can develop solutions to transform common problems.”.

Beyond the educational resources it produced, the TREES Teaching Module fostered a community of teachers committed to transforming education through reflection, active listening, and collaborative work. By bringing together voices from different regions, disciplines, and educational levels, the module demonstrated that Teaching for equity is not an individual task, but a practice that is strengthened when it is built collectively.

Caring, nurturing and getting ahead: inequality begins in childhood 

Does inequality begin before we can decide about our own lives?

In the second episode of The game of life, TREES' videopodcast and the documentary film directed by Andrés Ruiz Zuluaga, we talk about motherhood, caregiving, teenage pregnancy and the inequalities that begin to mark life from early childhood.

Together with Raquel Bernal, rector of the Universidad de los Andes and an expert in early childhood, and Andrés Moya, director of Seeds of Attachment, Leopoldo Fergusson, co-director of TREES, and Andrés Ruiz Zuluaga reflect on the women who support entire families, the invisible burden of caregiving and how opportunities - or their absence - begin to shape the future from the earliest years of life.

From the stories of The game of life, This episode explores how social inequalities permeate motherhood and parenting: from teenage pregnancy and the absence of support networks, to the economic, emotional and cultural barriers that millions of women face in caring for and raising their children.

The conversation also addresses the role of the first years of life in children's development, how early experiences impact the future and why talking about early childhood is also talking about poverty, gender, violence and social mobility.

In this episode

  • Why does inequality start from the earliest years of life?
  • Maternity, care and poverty in Colombia
  • Teenage pregnancy and inequality traps
  • Women who support entire families
  • What happens when parenting depends almost exclusively on mothers?
  • Early childhood, violence and life opportunities
  • How experiences from 0 to 6 years of age shape the future
  • The stories behind the inequality data
  • The invisible burden of care and gender gaps
  • What would have to change in order to grow up in a more equitable country?

Watch or listen to the full episode

📌 New episodes coming soon.

When not everyone counts the same: Why inequality is not just in the checkbook?

Inequality is not only reflected in income. It also appears in how we are valued, perceived and heard. In this masterclass, Leopoldo Fergusson, full professor at the School of Economics of the Universidad de los Andes and co-founder of TREES, argues that the most essential equality, the one that matters more than inequality of opportunities or outcomes, is that of being treated with equal consideration as members of a political community. Using everyday examples and research findings, he discusses the expressions of this type of inequality in Colombia, its historical and cultural roots, and the opportunities we have to overcome it.

The session is presented by Jhon Quinchua and was part of Pensar en Voz Alta, the Icesi University Festival, which brought together open conversations on the future of democracy, the inequalities that permeate society and the impact of artificial intelligence.

The game of life: a videopodcast to discuss inequality, social mobility and Colombia

What really determines the opportunities we have in life? How do the place where we are born, the relationships we build, and the barriers—both visible and invisible—influence our life paths?

From the film The game of life*, we are launching a new video podcast that sparks conversations about inequality, social mobility, early childhood, classism, education, privilege, and territorial issues in Colombia.

In each episode, Leopoldo Fergusson—professor of economics and co-director of TREES— and Andrés Ruiz—Director of Communications at Uniandes and director of the film—talk with researchers, teachers, artists, and individuals with diverse life experiences to explore how inequalities permeate daily life and shape people’s opportunities.

The podcast takes as its point of departure the real stories portrayed in the documentary film The game of life, a film made over the course of more than 14 years that follows the lives of Colombian families in different parts of the country. Drawing on these stories, the conversations bring together personal experiences, research, and film to reflect on the many dimensions of inequality.

The videopodcast of The game of life seeks to create a space to think about the country from different perspectives and open conversations that often remain outside the public debate.

*The film is based on the research of the Colombian Longitudinal Survey (ELCA) of the School of Economics at the Universidad de los Andes. The ELCA followed 10,000 families for more than a decade to better understand the dynamics of poverty and inequality in Colombia.

🎧 Watch or listen The game of life videopodcast on all platforms:

Check out the first six episodes:

A production by El juego de la vida and TREES, an initiative of the Universidad de los Andes that conducts research, teaches, and raises awareness to influence public discourse on inequality. 

📌 New episodes every week.

We hosted the second Political Economy of the Global South Conference (PEGS) in Bogota, Colombia. 

On March 16 and 17, we held the second edition of the Political Economy of the Global South Conference (PEGS) at the Universidad de los Andes.  

The meeting brought together academics and international experts in sessions on extractivism, inequality, informality, global fragmentation and international trade, as well as in discussions on new forms of cooperation in the face of the challenges of ecological transition and sustainable development. 

These sessions sought to answer a fundamental question that, as Jimena Hurtado, Vice Rector for Research and Creation at the Universidad de los Andes and co-founder of TREES, put it: “How can we understand an economy that does not work for everyone in countries where inequality is not a figure but a daily reality?. 

From this perspective, the conference also sought to generate exchanges between countries of the global south that share histories of violence and the search for ways to transform them, with a potential that goes beyond academic dialogue. In Hurtado's words, this type of space allows the construction of collaborations that connect knowledge with concrete historical, institutional and social processes. 

The keynote address was given by Julieta Lemaitre, magistrate of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), whose career embodies precisely this crossover between academia and institutions. Her intervention addressed the relationship between citizenship and state, the ways in which communities build solutions in contexts of state absence and the role of justice in post-conflict scenarios, showing how institutions can both reproduce and transform inequalities. 

Below is an illustrated publication summarizing ‘Rebuilding’, Lemaitre's keynote lecture.:

View post on Instagram.

Thus, PEGS is conceived as a broader process of dialogue among countries of the global South, recognizing both their differences and the existence of shared structural challenges, including inequalities. It does so by articulating the work of centers or initiatives such as TREES in Colombia, the Center for Critical Imagination (Cebrap) in Brazil, the Applied Economics Program of El Colegio de México, Pathways Beyond Neoliberalism in the American University in Egypt, and the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at Wits University in South Africa, which collaborate within the Emerging Political Economies (EPE) Network.  

As part of this effort to articulate a network of countries that share similar realities, the conference also reflects a commitment to amplify knowledge of these contexts. In Hurtado's words, the aim is to build agendas that are not “recipients of frameworks developed in other contexts, but interlocutors with their own voice and questions”. 

In the same vein, several of the panels highlighted the need to review the frameworks from which the problems of the global south are understood. “It is important to have a global south perspective for a global economy. Sometimes we think from a perspective that doesn't resonate with the way people in these countries live,” said Pierre Nguimkeu, professor of economics at Georgia State University and director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. 

An example of this type of discussion was the session on inequality, led by Leopoldo Fergusson, professor at the School of Economics of the Universidad de los Andes and co-founder of TREES, with the participation of Rodrigo Uprimny, senior researcher at Dejusticia and professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Raymundo Campos and Aurora Ramírez Álvarez, professors at El Colegio de México.  

There, different dimensions of the structural gaps in the region and the challenges to address them from interdisciplinary approaches were discussed. As Uprimny pointed out, there is a disconnect between the field of human rights and the analysis of inequality: while normative frameworks have made progress in addressing discrimination between groups, “when one enters the field of social and economic inequality, the human rights movement is, in a certain sense, silent”. Along these lines, he stressed the need to connect rights more directly with the dynamics of inequality, not only as a theoretical problem, but also as a practical one. 

In this regard, Fergusson stressed that inequality is not limited to income differences, but produces deeper forms of social separation: “people with different income levels live so far apart that they end up being culturally distinct, as if they were different groups”. In this sense, he stressed that one of the central challenges is to think about these gaps not only in terms of distribution, but also in terms of rights and what it means to have an equal position in society, particularly in contexts such as those of Latin America. 

Labor informality was another of the central themes of the meeting. Laura Alfers, WIEGO's international coordinator, raised the discussion aligned with the idea that the frameworks do not coincide with the realities of the countries of the South: “60% of workers are in informal employment, something that could increase with technological change. Our labor institutions are still oriented around an idea imported from countries in the global north, developed in the 1940s and 1950s for labor markets that do not exist in the south.” 

In addition to the academic sessions, the conference included a research workshop, a teaching session and strategic spaces for articulation between centers in the global south that are part of the Emerging Political Economies Network, These meetings helped to consolidate a south-south network to promote those voices and questions of their own. These meetings contributed to consolidate a south-south network to promote these voices and questions.  

Throughout the event, the persistence of overlapping and mutually reinforcing structural gaps was highlighted, many of which go unnoticed because we tend to always look in the same places. In this context, the conference highlighted the need to broaden the analytical approach. In Hurtado's words: “to broaden our gaze, to look where we usually do not look and to accept that absence in the record [evidence or data] does not mean absence in reality”. 

See the video summary of the event.

Taller Grant Fund III

A research network from Latin America  

A total of 54 researchers have participated in the TREES Research Grant Fund workshops. They are conducting 40 research projects and come from 10 different disciplines and 3 countries: Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay—an academic network that transcends institutions and borders.

Taller Grant Fund III

Understanding inequalities requires high-quality research. To this end, it is important to create spaces where researchers from Latin America, representing various disciplines, can engage in dialogue, question their own approaches, and collectively develop new research questions. That is why we created the TREES Research Grant Fund, whose purpose is to fund research projects and foster an academic community committed to broadening our understanding of inequalities from multiple perspectives. 

The first Research Grant Fund workshop was the September 27, 2024 and brought together economists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and historians for the first time, who shared their projects in a space designed to foster the exchange of ideas and strengthen their research through interdisciplinary dialogue. 

From this first meeting, it became clear that the value of this initiative goes beyond funding. Bringing together researchers from different disciplines allowed each project to receive feedback from various fields, broadening the analytical frameworks for addressing inequalities. 

Watch the video summary of the First Grant Fund Workshop.  

During the second workshop, the May 7, 2025, the participants presented their ongoing research and received feedback from colleagues. This session proved particularly valuable because it allowed them to identify strengths, challenge assumptions, and explore new lines of analysis before completing their studies. 

For James Torres, a professor of history and geography at the Universidad de los Andes, said, “The workshop is fantastic because it brings together an interdisciplinary team of economists, historians, political scientists, and lawyers all discussing the same topic: inequality.” 

The discussions addressed topics as diverse as the role of the state in land distribution, the reconstruction of women’s place in economic history, informal employment, social mobility, the cultural dimensions of inequality, and the challenges of applying models developed in the Global North to Latin American contexts. 

That diversity also transformed the research itself. Natalia Amaya, a researcher at the Prolongar Foundation, highlighted how the conversation with other participants opened up new possibilities for her work: “I really liked the comparative perspective. One of the professors suggested we look at classism versus the caste system in India, something we hadn’t considered.” 

Similarly, Emiliano Tealde, an economist and professor at the Catholic University of Uruguay, highlighted the value of receiving feedback while the project was still in development: “It’s very constructive to receive comments from colleagues at this stage. Concerns arise, as do weaknesses one might have suspected, but there are also suggestions that help improve the work.” 

As explained Leopoldo Fergusson, head of research at TREES, “We want to look at inequality not only from a strictly economic perspective. This has led to a very rich mix of perspectives on its causes and consequences.” 

Watch the video summary of the second workshop.

The third edition of the workshop was held on February 17 of 2026. The researchers spent the meeting discussing the progress of their projects and receiving feedback from their colleagues. This approach fostered more in-depth conversations about the methodologies, findings, and challenges of each research project. This way of working was appreciated by the participants, as noted by Sebastián Fleitas, professor at the Catholic University of Chile: “I think it’s very important to have a space for reflection on inequality where different perspectives can contribute, build on one another, and address the problem of inequality in Latin America and its solutions.” 

Beyond academic exchange, the workshop also strengthened a research community committed to producing knowledge in a rigorous and collaborative manner. Luz Ángela Rodríguez, a professor in the School of Rural Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, noted: “Thinking collectively about inequalities provides us not only with a learning community, but also with the opportunity to develop new ideas for further research and, ideally, to influence public policy processes.” 

Watch the video summary of the third workshop. 

Over the course of the three editions, the following have participated 54 researchers, which develop 40 investigations from 10 disciplines different and 6 cities in Latin America: Bogotá, Medellín, Santa Marta, Villavicencio, Putumayo, Santiago, Chile, and Montevideo. This consolidates an academic network that transcends institutions and borders. 

Several of these studies are already part of the TREES Research Repository and continue to provide evidence to help us understand the multiple dimensions of inequality. When research is open to the exchange of ideas and peer feedback, it expands its capacity to understand the root causes of inequalities and generate evidence that contributes to the design of public policies and other initiatives aimed at building more equitable societies. 

Progress Report 2023-2025

Transforming reality requires changing the ideas that sustain it.

Therefore, in TREES we work to understand and transform inequalities based on rigorous knowledge. In this report we share what we have done between 2023 and 2025 in our three areas of work: Research, Teaching and Outreach. Here you will find our main achievements, learnings and challenges.

To view the report, click the button.

TREES Challenge: researching with communities transforms the way we understand inequalities

The TREES Challenge: Revealing Classism (2024-2025) brought together 120 undergraduate and master's students from different disciplines and from eight departments of the country in an immersive and collaborative experience aimed at designing strategies to strengthen social cohesion. Through participatory research methodologies, the teams explored attitudes, perceptions and practices related to classism in everyday contexts.

In-Person Meeting for TREES Challenge Participants (2024–2025)

More than an academic exercise, the challenge opened a space to connect research, critical and ethical thinking and collective work. Rather than viewing communities as objects of study, the participatory research methodology promoted processes of dialogue and co-creation in which the people involved were able to reflect on classist attitudes and how they reproduce inequalities.

For Irma Flores, associate professor at the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de los Andes, one of the main contributions of this approach is that it allows “not only to bring a topic such as classism to a community, but also to talk to that community to see what they understand by classism”. From this perspective, participatory research not only produces knowledge: it also strengthens the social fabric and creates more horizontal relationships between researchers and communities.

Watch the reel and find out why participatory research was key to #RetoTREES

The challenge was aimed especially at students in training, precisely because this academic moment can open spaces for critical exploration and interdisciplinary creativity. As Paula Jaramillo, TREES teaching leader, points out, it is “a moment in life in which they can perceive the classisms around them and try not to reproduce them and also do something about them”.

The challenge was developed in six phases that guided the teams in the design and implementation of participatory action research in their own environments. Throughout the process, students identified and critically analyzed attitudes, relationships, perceptions and practices that reproduce - or challenge - dynamics of classism in everyday life. For the two editions of the Challenge, 2024 and 2025, the last phase culminated in a face-to-face meeting at the Universidad de los Andes, where the teams shared their findings, discussed their methodologies and reflected collectively.

Beyond presenting results, the final meeting allowed students to connect their practical experience with theoretical, methodological, and ethical discussions on how to conduct research alongside communities. As Blas Zubiría Mutis, a mentor from the Universidad del Atlántico, stated during the 2024 meeting, the process allowed participants to “engage in a concrete research experience, using parameters established by TREES and linking them to theoretical, methodological, and epistemological reflection on participatory research.” In the first edition of the Challenge, teams from the Universidad del Norte, the Universidad del Atlántico, El Colegio de México, and the Universidad de los Andes developed research questions, designed methodologies, and evaluated—together with the communities—whether this type of research was meaningful and useful to those participating in it.

TREES 2025 Challenge certificate delivery.

The projects developed during the challenge also showed how classism manifests itself in everyday scenarios. One of the teams from the Universidad del Atlántico investigated dynamics of classism and microclassism in Alameda del Río, an urban housing project that brings together people from different socioeconomic contexts. Through observation, interviews and surveys, the team identified how everyday practices - such as drying clothes in windows or the presence of street vendors - generate tensions related to social status and perceptions of exclusivity.

The research showed how certain prejudices, towards informal activities and ways of inhabiting the space, reflect stereotypes and class barriers that generate tensions in coexistence. Beyond identifying these dynamics, the process allowed us to open conversations with the community about the ways in which these practices affect relations between neighbors and the perception of the “other” within the same territory. “Through surveys and interviews, we collected perceptions of exclusivity and prejudice towards informal activities such as street vending. These results will allow us to propose mitigation measures and foster understanding of classist attitudes,” explained Andrés Eduardo Miranda Pacheco, challenge participant and member of the #SOMOSUA team.

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The Alameda del Río project showed how the challenge not only sought to produce data on classism, but also to generate processes of listening and collective reflection. This same logic ran through other projects of the TREES 2024 Challenge, such as the one developed by the SINPREJUICIOS team, which investigated the dynamics of classism in a beauty salon in Bogota. Through interviews and observation, the team identified how class differences between employees and clients produce derogatory attitudes towards workers.

“We discovered that personal attention, talking to the client, is considered an ‘implicit service’ that affects less talkative employees. We also found xenophobia and gender preferences among the stylists,” explained María Fernanda Blanco, a participant in the SINPREJUICIOS team. For the members of the project, one of the main lessons learned from the challenge was to understand the importance of humanizing people in the research and not seeing them only as data.

In addition, the Challenge served as a space for building networks among students from multiple regions and socioeconomic contexts, strengthening ties and collective learning. Valentina Gutiérrez, a student at Universidad de la Sabana, talks about what it meant to her to participate in the TREES 2025 Challenge.

“In this experience I understood the importance of each discipline, because each one brings a different look that enriches and transforms the way we understand reality. The most important teaching is that we must constantly challenge ourselves and question what attitudes or behaviors may be replicating classism, even when we are not fully aware of it.”

This reflection was also echoed in the experience of Verónica Rumaña Moreno, a student at the Universidad de los Andes and member of the team. Sentipensante Fabric. For her, one of the main lessons learned was to understand that classism does not always manifest itself in an obvious way. “Discriminatory behaviors are not necessarily expressed explicitly; many times they appear in subtle actions that have a profound impact on people,” she said.

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The teams' findings also revealed a major challenge: classism is often deeply normalized in everyday interactions, which makes it difficult to identify, investigate and even name. This is why the participatory research methodology takes on greater importance in the TREES Challenge, as it allows for the opening of spaces for listening and dialogue, and for the communities themselves to name and identify classism in their environments.

For more than five months, students not only develop research on different expressions of classism in their immediate environments, but also explore concrete ways to recognize and mitigate these attitudes that create inequality gaps in everyday life.

Watch here the TREES 2024 CHALLENGE coverage reel

Second TREES Research Grant Fund Workshop at the Universidad de los Andes

We have already held the first two workshops to strengthen the TREES research community. These two meetings brought together researchers who received financial support through the Grant Fund I and II calls for proposals. The researchers came together to share ideas, receive feedback and enrich their work.

Watch the video summary of the first Grant Fund workshop:

On May 7, 2025, Grant Fund II researchers were at the Universidad de los Andes with a common goal: to hear how their colleagues are studying inequalities from multiple disciplinary perspectives and contexts. The meeting served to share advances, discuss questions and strengthen an academic community committed to understanding inequalities in the global south.

During the event, researchers presented their ongoing projects and received feedback. Discussing ideas at an early stage allows them to improve approaches and strengthen analytical frameworks. “I really liked the comparative perspective. For example, one of the professors suggested we review classism versus caste in India, which we hadn't thought about,” commented Natalia Amaya, researcher at Fundación Prolongar.

Participants discussed the role of the state in land distribution, the reconstruction of the place of women in economic history, the dynamics of labor informality, the limits of social mobility, the multiple cultural dimensions of inequality and the challenges of applying models from the global north in Latin America.

The workshop was also an opportunity to strengthen cooperation between researchers from different disciplines. This approach seeks to broaden theoretical frameworks on inequality and generate useful evidence for public policies and citizen initiatives. “We want to look at inequality not only from its strictly economic dimension. This has produced a very rich mix of perspectives on its causes and consequences,” explains Leopoldo Fergusson, TREES Research Leader.

With some of these investigations already published, learn more about them in our research repository, With the Grant Fund III workshop underway, we confirm our commitment to contribute from rigorous knowledge to build more equitable societies.

Watch the video summary of the second Grant Fund workshop: