EDITORIAL

Presentation of Volume 15 N° 2, July-December 2017.

The current edition of the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth is structured around various thematic areas based on complex problems. Each thematic area, similar to the contexts from which the articles are written, conform a specific field of knowledge in accordance with their textual emphasis and the purpose of highlighting a range of human, personal, institutional, social, cultural, historic and political realities. The texts and purposes of the articles are a demonstration of the thematic richness of the problems tackled by the social sciences, which is evident in the texts and arguments developed by each author.

The magic of these articles is in the delicate nature and finesses required by scientific research in the social sciences that is united with the target populations of children, adolescents, youth, schools and families that act as sources of information. Features of these studies include: the complex manner of carrying out large scale qualitative research that also include quantitative and mixed methods as other important options; the diversity of contextualized methods that unite the research with a way of seeing, acting and relating to multiple realities, which include their own perspectives as interpreters and readers of these realities; and the methodological procedures that uncover the curiosities and surprises in the epistemological dialogue between researchers and sources of information. In each article there are steps that travel through many manifestations of social problems that while they are connected to a territory -country, place or space- they are also located in a time. These are local problems and contexts with territories located in Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and México. And on the other hand they are also temporal, given that the studies correspond to a defined time in each one, while other studies are located in a fragment of history. Given the conditions of the studies that have given rise to each article, these will be references to be cited, and at the same time will act as sources of motivation for new studies that can be compared with other territories in Latin America.

All of these articles are based on the results of research, and among these, Doctorial and Masters theses. In other words, these articles represent the beating of an academic heart that is shared by curious people, which is why they occur in a place, with a population and at a particular moment in time in which they interact and call people's attention in such a way that it becomes a motivation for joint understanding that is united to the development of proposals for taking action. The beating of an academic heart that accompanies the formation of high level professionals with the purpose of highlighting the tensions between parties involved in a topic, problem or social process. In this case, the current edition of the Latin American Journal for Social Sciences and Youth, in its sections, puts into dialogue meetings and tensions between sub-categories of analysis and interpretation that can be seen in the content of the article and its title.

In the first section of Theory and Meta-theory, the Journal includes a literature review of previous scientific work that highlights the interaction between: education and teaching practices of the subject of history, self-esteem and attachment, the educational field, hermeneutics and phenomenology, pedagogy of difference and theatrical pedagogy, education in networks and unemployment. The second section of Studies and Research details the course of research studies that explore the interaction between: local policy and practices; meanings of (traditional) rural and (modern) urban identities of children; education, absenteeism and dropping out of school; education and the environment; biographic and ideological narratives of disability; education and health; education and school-based violence; education and generational discourses; identity and gender distinctions; individualization of young people and conditions of their settings; teaching-learning and theatrical techniques; evaluative contexts of games and real life; the communication media and representation of students with hoods; education and politics in young people; politics and social wellbeing in childhood, youth and old age; policies and development in the provision of assistance to young people; child and adolescent protection policies; violence in same-sex couples and related factors; violence among males and females in rural schools; socialization, wellbeing and tension in young people; crisis and confrontation resources in families; family, education and peace; family and re-education; new technologies and characteristics of work in young people; teaching of history and understanding of violence today; and compliance with educational improvement and quality plans.

In this first sub-category, and as an opening invitation to explore the content of the current Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Youth and Childhood, there is an intellectual and academic wealth that hopefully reaches and can be incorporated into social policies. In this way, each text has a life that goes beyond academics and the social sciences because the purpose is to divulge knowledge and also fragments and views of social realities that are problematic in the real world where human beings circulate: children, adolescents, young people, adults, the elderly as well as family, school, historical, cultural, social and political settings whose lives are affected by public, private and mixed institutions that are promoters, creators or receptors of public policies at local, regional, national, international and global levels. We can hope that one day these texts will act as criteria for making decisions that are more contextualized to the own realities of diverse actors in civil society and the state.

With the goal of reinforcing this invitation, and articulated with the categories that are reflected in the 31 articles included in the current edition of the Journal, we are present below each section, including the title, thematic emphasis and objectives of each article.

In the Theory and Meta-theory section, the featured authors carry out a review and analysis of previous historic-educational studies, literature reviews and systematizations that are focused on categorical frameworks, such as the relation between education, pedagogy and teaching practices. The article titled "Thought related to the history of educational institutions in Argentina: Contributions to the debate" re-proposes the methods and forms of doing and thinking this story that transcends the guidelines of positivist tradition (Sebastián Perrupato). "Self-regulation and its relationship to attachment in childhood" provides a comparison between the findings of studies carried out on this topic (Lorena Muñoz-Muñoz); "Research trends on families in Colombia. An educational perspective" identifies some possible areas in terms of proposals for working with families (Ruth Milena Páez- Martínez); "Creative drama: a tool for cognitive, emotional, social and academic development of students and teachers" has the goal of exploring the nature and origin of creative drama, its educational possibilities for the development of personality, the improvement of cognitive processes and the achievement of more efficient learning (José Joaquín García-García, Nubia Jeannette Parada- Moreno and Arley Fabio Ossa-Montoya); Young people who are not in employment, education or training (Neet) in Uruguay. The experience of the Youth in Network Program" brings together the different forms of intervention that contribute to working with young people and analysis the symbolic construction of young people in regards to their condition (Mónica de Martino-Bermúdez and Fernando López).

In the Studies and Research section, the variety of articles included in this edition are predominantly qualitative (hermeneutic, phenomenological, case studies, historiographical, narrative, documentary studies, discourse analysis, documentary analysis, ethnographic documentary analysis and exploratory-descriptive) along with some quantitative and mixed method studies. These are concentrated in eight macro-categories, as described below:

a) Discourses and meanings. "Children's rights: from discourse to local policies, an analysis of the case of Bogotá" analyses childhood and adolescence public policy in the city of Bogotá and the way in which this the rights of this population have been interpreted and incorporated (Ernesto Durán-Strauch); "Construction of children's identity in rural contexts in the district of Concepción, Chile" has the goal of collecting the different aspects of the rural world and the features of its identity and cultural construction, enquiring about the perceptions and experiences of children and describing the cultural patterns, needs, social problems, skills and strengths that characterize them (Beatriz Aguirre-Pastén, Alexandra Gajardo-Tovar and Lorena Muñoz-Madrid); "Infrequent attendance and students dropping out from Early Childhood Education. Testimonies from mothers in Uruguay" seeks to understand factors that have an impact on infrequent attendance and students dropping out in early childhood education (Fernando Salinas-Quiroz, Paola Silva, Verónica Cambón and Sandra Fraga).

b) Experiences, life stories and practices. "Environmental education and its importance in strengthening the sustainable Humanity-Nature-Territory relationship" has the purpose of identifying aspects of education that allow for the development of socio-emotional skills and the appropriation of the biodiversity of humans with nature (Ronald Fernando Quintana-Arias); "Disability and configuration of Emotional Capital (EC): the case of three fathers" is an article that has the objective of showing the configuration of CE through the analysis of the life stories of three fathers who have children with disabilities (Nora Aneth Pava-Ripoll); "Self-regulatory skills and child oral hygiene with support from parents" analyses variables that impact on the self-care behaviors of pediatric patients that attend a medical appointment, as well as on behavior of their parents with the goal of improving families' oral health (Martha Leticia Gaeta, Judith Cavazos and Ma. del Rosario L. Cabrera).

c) Historical contexts, identities and biographies. "A historical perspective on school violence. Buenos Aires, 1969-2010" is an article written with the purpose of presenting the social processes that are most associated with the emergence of school violence (Natalia álvarez-Prieto); "The making of a generation in the current discourse of Chilean youth" identifies the elements that characterize current Chilean youth through the notions of generation that young people construct (Carolina álvarez-Valdés and Antonia Garcés-Sotomayor); "Brown is beautiful. Identity components of young evangelical Christian Aymara women" evidences factors that make identity references in this invisible population (Miguel ángel Mansilla and Carlos Piñones-Rivera); "Young people's biographical narratives and individuation processes in marginalized neighborhoods of Argentina" analyses the continuities and heterogeneities that are present in the individualization processes of young people who live in marginalized neighborhoods in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (Pablo Francisco Di Leo and Ana Clara Camarotti).

d) Teaching-learning processes and audiovisual media. "Contextualized Teaching and Learning using Drama Techniques for Members of the Heavy Metal Subculture" has the goal of creating a pedagogical proposal that includes this subculture in classrooms where English as a Second Language is taught (Amalia Ortiz de Zárate and María Nicol Guarda); "Formation of social values in adolescents that play Grand Theft Auto V" seeks to understand the relations between pre-adolescents and new communication practices in digital networks and the construction of social values provided through their participation in collaborative video games (Clara Victoria Meza-Maya and Sandra Marcela Lobo-Ojeda); "Media representations of youth protests: The hood as a metaphor" has the goal of highlighting the aggressive and misrepresentative images of youth that are broadcast on television news reports about young people in student movements (Camila Cárdenas and Carolina Pérez).

e) Childhood, adolescence, youth and public policy. "Engaging in politics at school: Biographical narratives of militant student youth in the bicentennial Argentina" has the purpose of articulating the place of the school in the interaction between young people and Argentinian politics in the years following the country's Bicentenary (2010) (Miriam Kriger and Shirly Said). "Policies implemented by the last Argentine dictatorship to bridge the "generation gap" analyses discourses and policies from the Ministry of Social Wellbeing of Argentina that are designed for children, youth and the elderly during the most recent military dictatorship in this country (1976-1983) (María Florencia Osuna); "Brazilian Youth Policy: proposal for Youth Centers" is an article that highlights the differences in the positions between federal and state governments in Brazil regarding the social assistance policy for this population (Rafael García Barreiro and Ana Paula Serrata Malfitano); "Challenges of protecting children and adolescents threatened with death in Brazil" presents the legal framework that has directed the creation and functioning of the government program designed for this purpose and the socio-economic profiles of those who have lived different forms of violations of their rights (Eduardo Lopes Salatiel, Cecilia de Andrade França, Juliana Marques Resende and Raquel Lanza Guimarães).

f) Families, education and crisis. "Parental models and their relation to violence among same-sex couples" has the goal of describing the parenting models in the cases of violence committed within these and other interpersonal relationships (Rosa Carolina Ronzón-Tirado, Luis Rey Yedra and María del Pilar González-Flores); "Acts of bullying in an agricultural high school – Autonomous University of Chapingo, Mexico" is an article that shows through the accounts of victims what are the main acts of bullying and also consults observers as to what types of aggression they view as the main forms of bullying (Rosalva Ruiz-Ramírez, Cristina Sánchez-Romero, Emma Zapata-Martelo, José Luis García-Cué, Ma. Antonia Pérez-Olvera, Beatriz Martínez-Corona and Gustavo Rojo-Martínez); "Referentiality, redefined from subjective wellbeing and socialization" highlights the tensions in the definition of referentiality, its constitution through significant relations that young people establish with people both within and outside their families and the way in which these relationships positively influence the obtaining of better conditions of subjective wellbeing (Farley Johanna Cardona- Rodríguez, Dora Liliana Osorio-Tamayo and Norman Darío Moreno-Carmona); "Dialogical Practices and Sociolinguistic Codes: Crisis and Family Changes in Dialogical Contexts" has the goal of demonstrating the relational movements experiences by families living in a crisis situation and the potential that emerges for the co-construction of moments of change and the transformation of these situations (María Hilda Sánchez-Jiménez); "Family co-responsibility in rehabilitation institutions for adolescent offenders?" highlights both the learning experiences of a strategic plan for the increase of this type of co-responsibility such as factors that are deficient (Viviana Carmenza ávila-Navarrete); "Family peace practices: an approach to the narratives of young people who study at university", which has the purpose of identifying the way in which the family develops their affective, communication, ethical potential and practices that are favorable for the construction of peace in daily life (Jhoana Alexandra Patiño-López).

g) Imaginaries, beliefs and education. "Work: Conceptions of young people working in call centers in a middle-sized Colombian city" has the goal of understanding the imaginaries and subjectivities of the concept of "work" assumed by young people who work in these types of organizations in the city of Manizales (Mariana Castaño-Ravagli); "Chilean students and the teaching of history in conflict zones" is a study that analyses the beliefs of students in La Araucanía in Chile regarding aspects associated with the teaching of the history of their region (Elizabeth Gloria Montanares-Vargas). h) Educational quality. "Quality of Higher Education in the areas of Social Sciences and Administration" examines improvement plans, progress and factors that facilitate and limit the quality of these programs and their social and entrepreneurial impact (Maritza Rengifo-Millán).

The different forms of studying, presenting and translating realities through the carrying out of research allow for the definition of some guidelines for work based on each topic and problem and for the populations that have reflected on their specific contexts.

The third section of the Journal, Reports and Analysis, present the usual accumulative index of the authors as well as the thematic index, which act as important guides for consulting the content of the Journal.

From the News Bulletin Number 239 issued by the Organization of Ibero-American States, there are notable articles such as "Reusable: is it possible to have an alternative model of technological development?", a review of a book written by Martín Parcelis, Darío Sandrone and Diego Lawler that proposes the use of open technologies that strengthen second hand technology markets to challenge the principle of using technology and then throwing it away. This publication argues for the prioritization of maintaining control over our machines instead of focusing on developing machines that we end up being slaves to.

The bulletin also invites participants to the "10th Ibero-American Congress on Science and Technology Indicators: Sharing in Facebook", which will be held from the 20th to the 22nd of November 2017 in San José, Costa Rica, organized by the Ibero-American Network for Science and Technology Indicators, the Ibero-American Observatory of Science, Technology and Society and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Telecommunications of Costa Rica.

From the World Organization for Pre-School Education there is a summary on the relevant role that this organization fulfills at a global level given that it is the oldest and biggest non-profit organization committed to strengthening human rights with a focus on early childhood. The Journal also includes the "Medellín Declaration" which was prepared during the Latin American Assembly of the Omep that had as its central theme the right to early childhood education.

We commemorate 40 years since the founding of CINDE with a text written by its Director General Alejandro Acosta Ayerbe that describes the organization's work in the areas of research, education and social development during these four decades.

The fourth section of reviews and recensions begins with a text from Ricardo Alberto Ocampo- Castaño and Claudia Jurado-Alvarán about the San José Comuna in Manizales, Colombia, which highlights the change in political thought in adolescents from this Comuna as another perspective in education based on a qualitative horizon and a numerical approach. There is also a transcription of the speech from the Dean of the Manizales Institute, Francis Rodrigo Otero-Gil, winner of the Compartir Prize 2017 for the best management by an educational director in Colombia. The Manizales Institute is located in this Comuna and has been a key component in the recovery of the neighborhood's social fabric.

The Journal continues with the practice of publishing significant interviews with researchers and academics that contribute to the social thought of Latin America and the Caribbean. In this edition we include the interview conducted by Lorena Natalia Plesnicar with Manfred Liebel about childhood in the unequal global order, in which they discuss topics such as representations of childhood and work in different socio-cultural contexts, children's rights in a historical perspective, the role of international organisms and the challenges inherent in post-colonial studies to think about childhood in this day and age, among others.

Laura Sarmiento interviews Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, who reflects on the genealogy of motivation, hope and shame that produces deterioration, widespread growth and conformism: "Now we are in a down cycle. There have been other down cycles and we have survived. So this shame always has a sub-text of hope. And so to also put my energy, my emotions, my shame, I am going to nurture these little sparks of hopes that come from young people, from people who don't conform."

The researcher and academic proposes a dialogue about family otherness with Professor Edison Francisco Viveros, who in his work in the field of Family Studies has been notable for his incessant commitment to understanding diverse and relational issues in the family experience through asking questions that enquire about their complexity

"Crossing social barriers. From inclusion and disability to compassion" is a project from the Liceo Los Alpes, a private school in the city of Cali, Colombia, that offers the International Baccalaureate. The initiative is the result of partnerships with inclusive institutions that don't just work with children from low-resource backgrounds and those from families that have been displaced and are victims of the armed conflict, but also with institutions that attend to children and young people with different physical disabilities.

In "We are Protagonists of our Story. Narrative of a young researcher", Andrés Felipe Castaño, member of the Working Group in Popular Education and Critical Latin American Pedagogies, as well as being a student of the Masters in Education and Human Development in the Centre for Advanced Studies in Childhood and Youth at Cinde and the University of Manizales, narrates his experience in which he has become a conscious and empowered subject of reality through a process involving research and social advocacy. In this process the researcher stops being an expert that simply teaches theory and becomes an ally who puts their toolbox at the disposition of the community.

As is the custom in the fourth section we include summaries of books that have bene recently published. The first is from a Professor at the Universidad de La Serena (Chile), Carlos Calvo, regarding the reprinting of the classic text from Jean Jacques Rousseau by Ediciones de la Junji titled "Emilio or the education", highlighting that this is a publishing house that is generally dedicated to the topics of childhood and education.

From the posthumously published book "Error or fraud? Scams and mistakes in child psychobiological research" by Ernesto Pollitt, researcher from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Walter Lizandro Arias-Gallegos comments about the ethical, methodological and epistemological lessons contained in these pages, which invite us to question the scientific activities that occurs in the world, specifically its motivations and social implications.

From the publishing house of the University of Manizales, Colombia, a summary is included of the book titled "Expanded Cinema. Creases that curse reality" by Carlos Fernando Alvarado-Duque. Through the cinema, his indirect object of study, the author explores the flows of the contemporary world and what can be loosely called "reality".

Also from the same publisher is the book titled "Rural Associations in the coffee growing zone of the Department of Caldas", which is supported by the United Nations Development Program, the Ministry of Work of Colombia, the Caldas Observatory of the Labor Marker and the University of Manizales. The main results from this study highlight the relevance that associations have for community development, as well as difficulties with the high level of dependence on external resources, the conformation of small-scale productive systems that don't generate surpluses and the lack of trust among actors who participate in collective actions.

Jaime Alberto Carmona-Parra, Director of the School of Psychology of the University of Manizales, introduces the book written by Jhoana Alexandra Patiño López titled "Narrations and auto-biographical stories about the construction of life in family", a title which precisely outlines the content of this text. The word "narrations" signals to the reader that they will find biographical excerpts with all of the force and vitality of the words of social agents when they relate their experiences. The book also defines its ontological, epistemological, political and esthetic positions.

"The first day of childhood after the war" by María Paz Gómez-Gaviria is a text on the first International Children's Day celebrated in Colombia following the ceasefire that put an end to the conflict between the Government of Colombia and the longest-running guerrilla in Latin America, the Farc, and asks a penetrating question: what did we celebrate on previous Children's Days?

The Journal includes from the "La Jornada" newspaper the obituary of Fernando Martínez Heredia (1939-2017), who was one of the most notable thinkers coming out of the Cuban Revolution and who drank from the ideas of José Martí, Fidel Castro and "Che" Guevara, bringing together sharp critical through with a solid revolutionary commitment and a lucid sense of history. In the case of Fernando Martínez Heredia, and in the words of Martí, "death is not real when one has done their job in life well".

A group of collectives that support the fight of the Mapuche people have signed a manifesto in which they denounce the territorial dispossession, violence and death that they are currently victims of, committed by the government, land owners and logging companies.

Also included in this edition of the Journal is a summary of the "Child and Youth Peacebuilders", which is a proposal to strengthen political subjectivities and generate peacebuilding processes. In 2017 the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth marks 15 years of uninterrupted publication. Since January 2003 it has had a permanent trajectory of growth and support of the enrichment of knowledge of childhood and youth in Latin America and the Caribbean. To continue with this editorial policy, this year our team of editors has designed a renewal project for the Journal based on the digital technologies that we have at our disposition so that this publication can be more dynamic and accessible to the broad populations of the academic and research communities and members of the general public who are interested in the fields of study related to childhood and youth. These changes will be implemented from September 2017 onwards.

We would like to thank all of the people who have accompanied us over these fifteen years of constant dissemination, our authors, our evaluators, our readers, our editorial and institutional teams and in general the academic and research community who have contributed to the Latin American Journal of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth becoming one of the most important publications on childhood and youth in Latin America, the Caribbean and Ibero-America.

As we sent this edition to the printer we were informed of the passing of our collaborator, Lorena Natalia Plesnicar, who left us on Sunday the 9th of July. Lorena was the offcial interviewer for the Journal during various years and in this edition we published her dialogue with the researcher Manfred Liebel. May she rest in peace.

Director-Editor,

Héctor Fabio Ospina

Guest Editor,

María Hilda Sánchez-Jiménez
Doctor in Psychology of the Universidad de Buenos Aires Head Professor, Universidad de Caldas Department of Family Studies

Associate Editors,

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

Liliana Del Valle
Secretariat of Education, Medellín, Colombia.

Marta Cardona
Member of the Coordinating Collective for the Masters in Education and Human Rights of the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana, Medellín, Colombia.