Step 1: Define Problem with community members

This step includes defining:

The Problem

In the Alem and San Pedro districts of Misiones only 56% of students complete the third grade.

Successful Outcome

The stakeholders decided that their goal would be to retain over 75% of students through the third grade.

Current Normative Behaviors

The identification of issues that relate to school drop out and the establishment of common practices is a prerequisite to the later identification of the PD practices which differ from the norm. In order to identify issues that relate to school drop out the participants developed a conceptual framework. Each issue that was identified was broken down into sub-issues, and participants were asked to report how they handle them (common practices). In order to decrease the tendency of individual schools to present what they do in a positive light, the participants were divided into groups that contained one person from every school. Hence the presentations were represented as "common practices" rather than representative of any specific school.

Program Description

In some school districts in rural Argentina, almost half of the students drop out before they complete the third grade. Although economic difficulties left many teachers and schools feeling like this problem was intractable, the Positive Deviance design has allowed parents and schools to see possible solutions by identifying what is going right. Using Positive Deviance, these schools discovered that within their district there are schools (the 'positive deviants') who are able to retain over 75% of their students,without access to any special resources. By examining the specific strategies and practices employed by these PD schools, the schools have come to see that there are things that can be done today.

Step 2: Determine