EDITORIAL

Presentation of Volume 13 N° 2 July - December 2015.

The construction of knowledge in the field of childhood and youth faces significant challenges: What theoretical, epistemological and methodological frameworks can we use nowadays to think of childhoods and youths that express an inexhaustible plurality of ways of being and existing? What academic or extra-academic procedures favor the comprehension of the worlds of children and young people in which residual structures of participation, education and socialization cohabit with emerging practices of political action and interaction in relation to technologies, involving new consumption habits that in turn lead to the creative use of subjectivization and communication? How can we address the living conditions of children and young people that in contexts such as Latin America are covered by diverse processes of social exclusion, economic and vital precariousness, of inequalities, injustice, oppression and violences that have deep historical roots and considerable levels of naturalization? How can theoretical production and the necessary understanding of realities be transcended to build new worlds and possibilities of dignified lives, not for children and young people, but with them, based on their perspectives, meanings, voices and forms of expression?

Progress needs to be made, and it is occurring, towards critical and trans-disciplinary approaches that allow for understanding and interventions in complexities of the social world and in the concrete realities of childhood and youth. The constitution of childhood and youth as "objects of knowledge" has been developed as a result of significant contributions carried out through different disciplines and nodes of reflection. The notion of childhood, for example, as explained by Sandra Carli (2011), has been configured through a range of contributions from the fields of psychoanalysis, sociology, law, social work, literary studies, communication and culture studies, anthropology, and history, among others. In addition, this has been supported in all types of imaginaries and representations that on occasions circulate in a contradictory manner: the concept of "minors" that need protection, are objectives of intervention and care and are subjects of rights are just some of the symbolic places in which they have been located. However, despite the fact that there are many approaches as well as themes and problems, the trends in social and cultural research in the areas of childhood and youth focus on areas that are less and less homogenized, abstract and part of disciplines and are more and more plural, contextual and relational.

The multiple forms of being a child and the complexities of childhood experiences have led to forms of research that are more flexible and open, both in theoretical and methodological terms, that transit along the gaps between disciplines and resist reductionist approaches or those focused on the perception of children as a lower category of citizen or subjects without agency. The work carried out in the field of childhood studies has been questioning the supposed universal and ahistorical character of childhood, the reduction of children to being depositories of the traditions or teachings from adults and the exclusively biological readings of children and the focus on vulnerabilities and what children lack. In their place, based on situated or local approaches (without calling these approaches particularistic), childhood has been thought through the lens of immersed socio-cultural constructions in material structures and webs of meaning that limit the possibilities of certain movements, determine life trajectories and sediment practices; but at the same time these include movements, don’t exhaust agencies nor are they located beyond avatars of history. Examples of this rich production of knowledge in the field of childhood are in the current edition of the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth, which we refer to further on.

It is important to add that this has also happened in the field of youth studies. Youth, as a social concept or category, has been covered from different theoretical and associated currents with different characteristics that, depending on the approach, are considered to define what it means to be a young person in a specific historical moment and society. In the prolific research that has been carried out in this area, a wide range of different knowledge has been created regarding the meaning of "youth", based on varied biological, pedagogical, anthropological, sociological, critical and political positions and perspectives. In this sense, the subjects considered young people have been questioned from the field of academia, but also from other areas of society (institutions, cultural industries, the media, etc.) through discourses that configure multiple images and imaginaries and that obey diverse intentions. As a result, young people have been considered as subjects immersed in a transition period or in search of identity, subjects that represent the motor of social change, subjects that are vulnerable and prone to risk, or subjects that are naturally dangerous and mismatched, just to name a few of the notions of young people identified in different research and literature reviews (Arango, Escobar & Quintero, 2008, Pérez-Islas, 2008, Muñoz, 2010, Gómez-Esteban, 2011).

Some of the most highlighted discourses that have instituted particular ways of thinking about/ building the concept of youth include the following: 1) The psychobiological or evolutionary discourse, that from an age-based perspective considers youth as a stage in a linear, unambiguous, continuous, progressive and accumulative development that is characterized by certain pre-determined social and biological features and associated with transition and incompleteness. 2) The social policies discourse that transits from representations of young people as "the future of society", strategic actors of development and subjects of rights to negative visions that associates them with at-risk individuals that are dependent, lack autonomy and are even potential delinquents (Gómez-Esteban, 2011). 3) The pedagogical discourse refers to youth as a stage of life to form oneself, to explore and to dedicate a period of time (of social moratorium) exclusively to study, deferring economic responsibilities and demands "linked with a full entry to social maturity: to form a home, work, have children" (Margulis & Urresti, 1998, p. 4). The social sciences discourse that brings together a range of aspects: culturalism from the United States of America, generational theory, a functional approach, a complexity and constructivism perspective, among others. 5) The cultural studies discourse, with its origin associated with the School of Birmingham (without being reduced to this), and to the research related to the youth sub-cultures as forms of symbolic resistance by the dominated groups against the dominating forces of society (Pérez-Islas, 2008).

Related to this panorama, and taking into account the warning made by Reguillo (2003) about not making the error of thinking of youth as a time-based, homogenous, ahistorical and essential continuum; social and cultural research in the field of youth studies also has transited towards places that problematize the most traditional conceptions based on constructivist, critical or complex discourses in which the youth condition is not a "simple stage in a linear biological-biographic sequence, but an historically defined socio-cultural construction (Rossi, 2006, p. 13). As stated by Valenzuela (2005), "youth is a concept that is empty outside of its historical and sociocultural content" (p. 19), which is the reason why it varies according to the historical moment in which it occurs, based on certain markers of identity (social class, place of origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), defined by the relationship with what has been defined as "non-youth" and even, according to elements such as life expectancy, mediated by socio-economic contexts. In this sense, these subjects of flesh and bone and their youth identities are much more related to socio-historical, polysemic, relational, changing and transitory constructions than with essential, crystallized or totalities defined exclusively by physical-biological factors.

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What is certain is that both in the field of childhood studies as well as youth studies, the production of knowledge has included at least three significant shifts that this edition of the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth aims to consolidate:

a) The disciplinary canons of the multi, inter and trans-disciplinary perspectives. Given the complexities and plurality of the experiences of youth and childhood, the production of knowledge has advocated for more and more research that is supported in broad theoretical fields and plural methodologies in the place of restricting themselves to one discipline or privilege the paradigm of monoculture and fragmentation. The current edition of the Journal, with an open theme, is a good example of this given that readers will be able to find reflections and research on diverse topics that circulate in the border zones of disciplines and offer a rich theoretical and methodological panorama. At a thematic level, in the first section, of theory and meta-theory, there are articles on children, young people and education. The second section, dedicated to studies and research, includes articles related to political issues, psychological and human development aspects and the topics of health, ethics and education for children and young people.

At a theoretical and epistemological level the articles included in this issue cover diverse field such as psychology, anthropology, clinical sociology, communication, education, political science, hermeneutics and social phenomenology, offering in addition methodological keys linked to ethnographic approximations, critical discourse analysis, life stories and quasi-experimental studies with pre/post-tests, among others.

b) From the ahistorical and homogenizing approach to the situated and contextual approach. The shift towards perspectives that place a greater focus on the role of history, the interconnected constitutional relationships between determined problems and the specific nature of contexts are evident in this edition of the journal. Articles are presented that come from or address situations relating to the contexts of countries such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Uruguay, Ecuador, Brazil and France. The comparative reading of this different articles allows for an understanding of related topics in different locations with an emphasis on concrete cases.

c) From knowledge of "what’s known" to an ethical-political commitment to social change. Research in the fields of childhood and youth studies demonstrate a growing commitment with the transformation of the living conditions of children and young people. Various articles included in this edition of the Journal allow for an in-depth look at the densities of certain topics related to childhood and youth studies and education and can provide insight into decision making or intervention actions, accompaniment and mobilization in favor of better living conditions for children and young people. A significant proportion of the articles also generate proposals and reflections that in an explicit way aim to transcend a single understanding of the world with the goal of promoting the construction of distinct realities and societies that are less exclusive.

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The 46 articles in the current edition of the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth can be organized into three groups in accordance with their intentions, moving between conceptualizations, affectations and proposals. In the group of conceptions we include work that focuses on the perceptions, principles, perspectives and meanings associated with some topic of exploration related to childhood, youth or education (migration, displacement, social inequality and others). The second group emphasizes the difficulties or problems that affect children and young people in diverse contexts. Finally, the third group of texts highlight the possibilities and develop proposals for new forms of living, education and society.

In this sense, in the first section on theory and meta-theory, various articles enquire about the conceptualizations of aspects that are of interest to researchers. The work of Luís Antonio Groppo has the objective of understanding the sociological concept of youth in contemporary society based on a bibliographical analysis in the field of sociology of youth. Ana María Arias-Cardona and Sara Victoria Alvarado explore a range of perspectives in the theoretical approach to the concept of "youth" and present a summary of a consolidated literature review based on the categories of "young people" and "policy". This is established with the goal of proposing a change of conception in the adult-centric views that see young people as "apathetic and disinterested" to a move towards transdisciplinary approaches based on diversity and the recognition of contexts.

In a different area, Carlos Federico Ayala-Zuluaga, Alejandra María Franco-Jiménez and José Enver Ayala-Zuluaga address the meanings associated with professional placements for education students and the tensions between theoretical positions and the realities faced by subjects during their placements based on the reflections of physical education students. Yicel Nayrobis Giraldo- Giraldo and Alexander Ruiz-Silva identify three trends in the approach to researching the concept of solidarity through a literature review, with a corpus made up of 39 research texts.

In the area of affectations, based on a critical reading that looks at the speaking maps of Participatory Action Research, Dery Lorena Suárez-Cabrera highlights the stigmatizing discourses on migration in Chile and especially for migrant children that are being configured as a new problematic subject. In the third group, and related to proposals, Felip Gascón and Lorena Godoy propose a new visual status of childhood that confronts the dominant visuality associated with children and questions the minority practices that the adult point of view constructs about children. Similarly, óscar Leonardo Cárdenas- Forero contributes to highlighting the participation of pre-school teachers from public schools in the Colombian pedagogical movement, with the goal of providing this recently created subjectivity in the public system with a different status and recognition of their participation in political mobilization. Martín Ierullo proposes to problematize the tensions and challenges in relation to child-rearing and care practices of children and adolescents in contexts of persistent urban poverty in different zones of the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires in the framework of the Piubamas program. This article evidences the consolidation of defensive care practices in neighborhoods with low socio-economic resources, as well as the extension of actions towards individual adolescents.

The second section of the Journal is focused on studies and research and includes a large number of articles, which can be grouped into the three categories previously mentioned. In terms of conceptualizations, Débora Imhoff and Silvina Brussino examine the notions associated with the origin of social inequality of children in Cordobá (Argentina) aged between 10 and 11. Karla Yunuén Guzmán-Carrillo, Blanca Sharim González-Verduzco and María Elena Rivera-Heredia describe a study that had participation of 177 primary school students in the community of Jesús del Monte, Michoacán (México), comparing psychological resources and different perceptions of migration among children that have experienced migration within their families compared to those that haven’t. Catalina González-Penagos, Melissa Cano-Gómez, Edwin J. Meneses-Gómez and Annie M. Vivares-Builes identify the oral health needs of children aged between 2 and 5 years from the Buen Comienzo-Fantasías de las Américas (Good Start-Fantasies of the Americas) program, that also included advocacy actions related to perceptions held by educational agents in the city of Medellín (Colombia) in 2013.

A study by André Vilela Komatsu and Marina Rezende Bazon characterizes the behavior of a sample of Brazilian adolescents (from public schools and adolescents in the youth justice system) based on their responses to a questionnaire that inquired about their concepts of behavior associated with the consumption of drugs and alcohol and participation in criminal acts. Carolina Bringas- Molleda, Lourdes Cortés-Ayala, María ángeles Antuña-Bellerín, Mirta Flores-Galaz, Javier López- Cepero and Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Díaz explore in their article the perception of mistreatment in romantic relationships between young people in Mexico and conclude, among other aspects, that the levels of victimization and perception of mistreatment are higher in university students of both sexes than among students from other educational levels. Also in Mexico, Rosario Esteinou presents the perceptions of indigenous adolescents regarding their autonomy and the behavior of their parents in terms of the support and control that they exercise. In addition, Carlos Hidalgo-Rasmussen and Alfredo Hidalgo-San Martín analyze the relationship between the perceptions of primary, secondary and preparatory students regarding violence in their country and municipality and insecurity in their community and school, directly related to their role in school bullying as observer, victim or perpetrator. Salvador Vargas-Salfate, Juan Carlos Oyanedel and Javier Torres-Vallejos discuss the relationship between socialization and interest in politics among young people in Chile through the lens of theories of socialization and political culture, which sustain that the political orientations of individuals are acquired through a process of relationships with others and with institutions in a reciprocal manner.

Some of the work presented in the journal transcend the topics of childhood and youth and are situated in the fields of education and health. María Cara-Díaz, Tomás Sola-Martínez, Inmaculada Aznar-Díaz and Francisco Fernández-Martín analyze in their article the perception that teachers have of the Social Inclusions Classes (SICs) of "élémentaire" Public Education Centers in Loire (France) in relation to different organizational aspects. Maritza Rengifo-Millán, based on the comparative description and analysis (between developed countries and Latin America) of studies carried out between 1997 and 2013 conclude that the significant differences are related to the little-developed culture of educational quality in Latin America, deficient funding of higher education, limited access for young people to universities and a lack of innovation and internationalization of curriculum and research.

In the area of health, ángela María Franco-Cortés and Ofelia Roldán-Vargas present the results of research carried out with the objective of understanding the meaning of responsibility for health among members of social organizations that promote the right to a healthy life. Diana Zulima Urrego- Mendoza and Marieta Quintero-Mejía, based on a study of medical narratives in Colombia, explore the situations that create dilemmas and the principles that guide decisions made by doctors in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. Also in health, Liliana Adela Zuliani-Arango, María Eugenia Villegas-Peña, Leonor Angélica Galindo-Cárdenas and Miglena Kambourova, through a study with undergraduate Medicine students and teachers at the University of Antioquia (Colombia), conclude that home visits to families is a significant didactic strategy for the integrated training of medical staff.

Finally, other studies from this first group of texts include an article from Mariana García- Palacios, Axel Horn and José Antonio Castorina about the process of researching the knowledge of children in the fields of genetic psychology and anthropology; the work of Mariano A. Castellaro and Néstor D. Roselli compares the differential characteristics of collaborative verbal interaction between different age groups (4, 8 and 12 years of age) and socio-economic contexts (advantaged and disadvantaged); and there is also an analysis from Paula Isacovich on different research perspectives in Social Sciences that have focused on youth labor insertion in Latin America based on educational inclusion, investigating policies that encourage youth employment and the experiences of young people in relation to training and work.

The second group of articles within the category of affectations include a study by Patricia Eliana Castillo-Gallardo and Alejandra González-Celis, who conducts an historical review of childhood in Chile and Latin America with the goal of contributing to the understanding of the mechanisms of legitimation of social inequality that still prevail. This section also includes research by Sonia Patricia Murguía-Mier, Claudia Unikel-Santoncini, Bertha Blum-Grynberg and Bertha Elvia Taracena-Ruiz that focuses on the psychological situations of young people suffering from anorexia nervosa and self-harm so severely that in some cases it results in their death. Ana Paula Eid, João Luis Almeida Weber and Adolfo Pizzinato, Brasil evidence cases of young people infected with HIV/AIDS and enquire about the prejudices, aspirations and fears that guide their daily lives and life plans.

Carolina González-Laurino presents a debate on public safety focused on young people in the youth justice system in the Uruguayan context, focusing on a project that in 2014 proposed to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16. In the article by Alexander Alvis-Rizzo, Carmen Patricia Duque-Sierra and Alexander Rodríguez-Bustamante, the authors examine autobiographical narrations to discuss the configurations of identity among young people that experienced the forced disappearance of a family member during their childhood. Also focusing on young people and family configurations are David Pac-Salas and Tirso Ventura de Pedro, whom through life histories of subjects in Zaragoza (Spain) establish a relationship between internalized educational capital and the length and type of educational trajectories developed by young people from working class families.

In a different field, the work of Marcos Jacobo Estrada-Ruiz on young women that drop out of secondary education in Hermosillo, Sonora (México) highlights the causes and consequences of this action, as well as the different situations of vulnerability that they are exposed to after dropping out due to different factors related to their social youth condition and sex. The concern not just for dropping out of school but in general for education and pedagogy is evidenced in the research of Juan Beltrán-Véliz and Juan Mansilla-Sepúlveda, revealing aspects that create obstacles for the pedagogical coordination practices in schools located in contexts of social vulnerability in Araucanía (Chile). The authors conclude that the absence of leadership and JUTP competencies and that teachers’ roles are focused on "technical management based on control" create difficulties for pedagogical coordination. In the area between affectations and proposals, the work of Nicolás Aguilar-Forero y Germán Muñoz examine some of the effects of structural violence on the lives of children and young people in Colombia in order to analyze the possibilities of peace building that can emerge from collective youth action. María Isabel Valencia-Suescún, Mónica Ramírez, María Alejandra Fajardo y María Camila Ospina-Alvarado refer to the situation of children in the Colombian armed conflict with the goal of evidencing multiple affectations and violations of their rights, but also highlighting the potential and capacities of action that are expressed in adverse contexts and in political socialization processes in which children participate.

Finally, in the third group of articles under the category of proposals, Fernando Salinas-Quiroz and Germán Posada present the need for targeting caregivers of children under the age of 6 for interventions and propose a method for evaluating their awareness and for guiding interventions directed to early childhood caregivers. In addition, Marta Martínez, María Cristina García and Daniel Camilo Aguirre-Acevedo analyze the temperament, responses to stress and the expectations and practices of child rearing for one year old children in Colombia, which allows these children to achieve results that are relevant for training programs for parents and highlight the importance of eradicating physical punishment and promoting alternative child rearing practices.

Daiana Russo, Florencia Arteaga, Josefina Rubiales and Liliana Bakker establish relations between the self-perception of social competencies in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and their socio-metric educational status. Their results are presented as a foundation for developing psychological intervention strategies to design educational approaches in the classroom that strengthen the social interaction of these children. Verónica Marín-Díaz and Carmen Sánchez- Cuenca highlight the proposal of values education through traditional stories in early childhood education as a valid methodology for the socialization of children.

An article by Pere Soler-Masó, Anna Planas-Lladó and Judit Fullana-Noell presents a system of indicators (SIAPJove) to evaluate municipal youth policies that have been applied in three municipalities in Cataluña (Spain) to test their applicability and efficiency. Through a study carried out in four public secondary schools in Santiago (Chile), Walter Manuel Molina-Chávez and Iván Gabriel Oliva-Figueroa identified a plurality of meanings and emerging identities that, according to the authors’ conclusions, have significant implications for the design of public policy for education and youth. In a similar field and using a case from the Ecuadorian educational space, Milton Leonel Calderón-Vélez analyses youth resistance to the adult world and proposes the construction of a "community of meaning" that makes the search for consensus possible between the adult world – directed by the school – and youth subjectivities.

Finally, the concern for issues of education and pedagogy is demonstrated in five other articles. In the first, Jairo Alejandro Sánchez-Castaño, Olga Yazmín Castaño-Mejía and Oscar Eugenio Tamayo- Alzate study meta-cognitive argumentation in the Science classroom among secondary students aged between 14 and 16 and establish a foundation so that future studies can further examine the interactions between argumentation and meta-cognition and emphasize how to develop these in the classroom. In the second article, Martín Bascopé, Macarena Bonhomme, Cristián Cox, Juan Carlos Castillo and Daniel Miranda suggest norms to improve and expand citizen education in Latin America, considering its importance for the creation of active citizens. In the third article, Patricia Botero focuses on collective narratives regarding the formative practices constructed in communities and social movements in Colombia and proposes that the communities linked to social movements contribute alternative forms of political formation in order to recreate learning-teaching processes based on other epistemologies and build subordinate processes anchored to cultural contexts and life territories, modifying forms of inter-human relations and between worlds. In the fourth article, Marcela Rojas-Maturana and Fernando Peña-Cortés approach the reality of the oral transmission of knowledge and practices in relation to territory in lafkenche families that live in wetland spaces on the coastal fringe of Araucanía (Chile). Both authors conclude that the systematic approach to bringing students closer to their original culture, the permanence of cultural advisors, real commitment from non-indigenous teachers and respect shown by these teachers towards the mapuche culture can eventually achieve satisfactory results in the preservation of the indigenous language and cultural practices in the lafkenche territory. In the fifth and final article, Víctor Daniel García-García enquires about the intentions of young university students related to entrepreneurialism, with the author concluding that youth entrepreneurialism can be an appropriate strategy to: (1) tackle the crisis of dignified employment; (2) strengthen the agency of the young subject, always and when the material and cultural conditions exist so that this can be possible.

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The current edition of the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth evidences that the production of knowledge and research in the areas of childhood and youth studies and education, representing towards complex and diverse interpretative horizons, contributing to the closing of gaps between academic work and concrete needs and consolidating multi-disciplinary and multi-situated views that reveal the conceputalizations that children and young people have of children and young people regarding different issues that concern them, the affectations and violations of rights that upset them and the proposals developed from reflection and social research in the search for better living conditions for children and young people.

References

Arango, A. M., Escobar, M. R. & Quintero, F. (2008). Nos miran pero ¿Ven más allá?: La construcción del sujeto joven desde las investigaciones de juventud. Para cartografiar la diversidad de los jóvenes. Bogotá, D. C.: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas.

Carli, S. (2011). El campo de estudios sobre la infancia en las fronteras de las disciplinas. Notas para su caracterización e hipótesis sobre sus desafíos. En I. Cosse, V. LLobet, C. Villalba & Ma. Zapiola (eds.) Infancias: Políticas y Saberes en Argentina y Brazil. Buenos Aires: Teseo.

Gómez-Esteban, J. H. (2011). Discursos sobre la juventud o las tribulaciones para ser lo que uno es. En J. C. Amador, R. García-Duarte & Q. M. Leonel Loaiza (eds.) Jóvenes y derechos en la acción colectiva: voces y experiencias de organizaciones juveniles en Bogotá, (pp.101-131). Bogotá, D. C.: Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Personería de Bogotá.

Margulis, M. & Urresti, M. (1998). La construcción social de la condición juvenil. Viviendo a toda. Jóvenes, territorios culturales y nuevas sensibilidades. Bogotá, D. C.: Universidad Central, Siglo del Hombre Editores.

Muñoz, G. (2010). Youth studies in Latin America: changes, exchanges, challenges. Youth studies in Colombia. Manizales: Universidad de Manizales-Cinde.

Pérez-Islas, J. A. (2008). Juventud: un concepto en disputa. Teorías sobre la juventud; las miradas de los clásicos. México, D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Reguillo, R. (2003). Jóvenes y estudios culturales. Notas para un balance reflexivo. En J. M. Valenzuela (coord.) Los estudios culturales en México, (pp. 354-379). México, D. F.: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Rossi, F. (2006). Las juventudes en movimiento: informe sobre las formas de participación política de los jóvenes. Quito: Universidad Politécnica Salesiana.

Valenzuela, J. M. (2005). El futuro ya fue. Juventud, educación y cultura. Anales de la Educación Común, 1 (1-2), pp. 1-38.

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The third section of "Reports and Analysis" brings together a varied agenda of events and programs. Vianey Johana Salazar-Villegas and Eliana Samara Sepúlveda-Villegas present the document "Social Mobilization as Public Policy: Experience of the Buen Comienzo (Good Start) program in Medellín (Colombia), in which social mobilization is developed as a process through which environments of dialogue, agreement and joint strategies are constructed that allow for the generation of social capital to favor the integrated development of children.

Below, the Clacso Working Group with an emphasis on the area of "Collective Action, Participation, Public Policies and State" share the Virtual Seminar: "Social mobilization, activism and collective youth action in Latin America and the Caribbean" that will be coordinated by René Unda, Melina Vásquez and Silvia Borelli and will have participation from some researchers from the Working Group as teachers: René Unda, Melina Vásquez, Silvia Borelli, Carles Feixa, Rose de Melo Rocha, Oscar Aguilera, Sara Victoria Alvarado, Ernesto Rodríguez, Pablo Vommaro, Angélica María Ocampo Talero, Juan Romero, María Isabel Domínguez García and Jorge Benedicto.

From the 12th to the 15th of August 2015, in the city of Santa Marta, the XVI Colombian Congress of Nutrition and Dietetics organized by the Colombian Association of Dietetic Nutritionists (Acodin), Magdalena campus, with support from members of the Atlántico Acodin group. The central topic of the Congress is: "Pandemic of Chronocity, Epigenetics and Nutritional Education and Coping Mechanisms".

Finally, Bulletin No. 102 from the Ibero-American Organization of States informs about one of the biggest projects on the planetary agenda: Beyond 2015: a universal agenda for the transition to sustainability. Also published as part of this project were "Recommendations for the Political Declaration of the Post-2015 Agenda".

In Revisions and Reviews (Fourth Section), Lorena Natalia Plesnicar interviews a researcher recognized in the field of youth studies in Latin America, Maritza Urteaga Castro-Pozo. Their dialogue produced the interesting text: "Research itineraries on youth cultures".

"Qualitative studies in quality of life. Methodology and practice" is the book coordinated by the Argentinian researcher Graciela Tonon that includes chapters that highlight the importance of qualitative methods applied in different fields of the study of quality of life in Latin American contexts, exploring the use and relevance of qualitative methods in research on quality of life. The review of this book is written by Antonio José López.

A new item in the Journal is the publication of emails to the editor, and that is launched by Sergio Domínguez-Lara and César Merino-Soto in which they make some comments on the document "Report on the Reliability of the CLARP-TDAH" (Salamanca, 2010) and that appeared Volume 8, No. 2 of this Journal. In addition, the author of the article, Luisa Matilde Salamanca Duque, responds to the email, which is also published.

César Merino-Soto and Sergio Domínguez-Lara also sent another email to the editor: "On the choice of the number of factors in psychometric studies in the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth". The motive of the correspondence is to highlight that, in a review of the literature recently published in the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth on psychometric studies (álvarez-Ramírez, 2014, Durán-Aponte & Pujol, 2013, Jiménez, Castillo & Cisternas, 2012, Zicavo, Palma & Garrido, 2012) that used a focus on the reduction of variables (principal components or factorial analysis), these can have methodological weaknesses that add to the natural limits of research. Of the authors mentioned, Emilse Durán-Aponte replied in an email that is published below.

"Why is it important to report the reliability intervals of the Cronbach alpha coefficient?", the email sent by Sergio Alexis Domínguez-Lara and César Merino-Soto briefly highlights the importance of including additional information to the estimations of reliability, an aspect that seems to unknown or still not appropriately valued in the research published in Latin America. As a corollary of this letter, an application for relevant information on the topic has been presented.

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We invite you to participate in the Call for Contributions for Volume 14, No. 2 of July-December 2016 on "Research and development in Social Sciences: socio-educational perspectives in a globalized world" and that aims to provide a space for all of the studies and analyses carried out in the area of experiences and research in Social Sciences, more related with socio-educational aspects in any of its areas. This edition will be organized by the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth (Colombia), the Area (Analysis of the Andalucian Educational Reality HUM-672) Research Group from the Andalucian Government (Spain) and Dr. Francisco Javier Hinojo-Lucena Professor of the University of Granada as co-coordinator of the edition, as well as different researchers from the Centers of Superior Research and Universities of Málaga, Albacete, Alicante, Huelva, Córdoba, etc. (Spain) and universities from countries such as Costa Rica, México, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, USA, Portugal, United Kingdom and Italy, among others.

The indexing of the Journal is A2 by the Publindex of Colciencias has been extended for a further year as of the 30th of June 2015 while the new norms are adjusted for the indexing of scientific journals in Colombia.

We had informed our readers in previous editions that we were applying for the Journal’s indexation in the Scopus bibliographic index. In the past week we have had a negative response to our request. An important reason for this response is the widening of the fields that the Journal publishes in and its difficult location in a specific disciplinary area. For the Journal it is important to contribute to the construction of the fields of childhood and youth in Latin America and the Caribbean; these fields don’t just require inter and transdisciplinary dialogue between the different social sciences, but also other knowledge and multiple voices of different social actors, epistemological controversy in which the knowledge in Social Sciences in the world are debated today.

A new section has been incorporated into the Journal’s website is called the Newsletter with information of interest that will be regularly updated and located on the right hand side of our page.

It is our wish that this investigative and academic record of various actions in the area of social sciences and childhood and youth studies is useful and helpful. It is designed to constitute a point of reference for permanent dialogue on fundamental topics of the political, economic, social and cultural context of Ibero-America and the Caribbean.

The Director-Editor

Héctor Fabio Ospina

The Guest Editor

Nicolás Aguilar-Forero
Professor from the University of Los Andes, Colombia.

Associate Editors,

Sônia Maria da Silva Araújo
Federal do Pará University, Brazil.

Liliana Del Valle
Secretariat of Education of Medellín, Colombia.

Marta Cardona
Member of the Coordinating Collective of the Masters in Education and Human Rights of the Latin American Autonomous University, Medellín, Colombia.