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This work presents a literature review of research journals in science teaching in Latin America and the Caribbean with the aim of identifying, describing and characterizing the main lines of research. The documentary basis is made up of 15 scientific journals and 490 papers that report work in educational research. From the abstracts of the papers it was possible to identify the problems addressed, which were grouped into five dimensions: learning science, teaching science, the science curriculum, science teachers and students of science teaching. The results show that teaching and learning science is the main problem addressed by most studies conducted in Latin America and the Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to produce a comparative policy analysis of nine pension systems (Chile, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic) by reviewing four variables of interest and by analyzing in-depth interviews of officials in charge of supervising pension systems. In this evaluation of pension education programs in Latin America, the experiences of Chile and Uruguay stand out. The study also examines social security education, which helps inform people about their rights and obligations under social security systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To analyze the researches conducted in Latin America on education for health during the last ten years, identifying the different conceptual developments proposed about this theme and the criticism made about it. Methods: This is a qualitative research describing the state of the art; forty articles from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico, and retrieved from searches in Pubmed, Lilacs, Redalyc, Scielo, Ovid, Science Direct, Oxford Journals, and Dialnet were examined. Results: The education for health is a multifocal and polysemic field with different purposes and theoretical trends. It was found that most of the authors cared for assuming a stance regarding this field, though few of them undertake the task to conceptualize both education and health. Conclusion: Different visions about education for health were perceived; however, this work criticizes the poor articulation observed in the papers between theory and practice on this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is the impact assessment analysis of the pilot project Rede@prender carried out in Colombia under the Programme EUROsociAL within the overall context of the Euro-Latin American cooperation. The first part of the paper introduces to, on the one hand, the Euro-Latin American cooperation model and the Programme's overall philosophy, while on the other hand presents the contents of the Colombian policy on education in citizenship competencies within which context the project was carried out. The second part elaborates an in-depth analysis of the main characteristics of the pilot project and tries to give account of its impact and achieved results. Finally, the third and inal part of the text contains some considerations on the application of the evaluation criteria, best practices and lessons learned from the project Rede@prender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative view of the training of economists in Latin America, analyzing curricula, commonly utilized textbooks, professors' time-commitments, teaching methods, and the use of technologies and computational tools. Also, following the approach of Colander (2005), the paper presents the results of a survey of Economics students, creating a socioeconomic profile of them and examining their attitudes and opinions. Among the regularities found for the five countries, particularly notable is the lack of connection between students' expectations regarding job market demand for economists and the actual demand by employment sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and explains the emergence and development of the concept of educational justice in Iberoamerica. From the comparison of the production among three countries, it suggests various reasons to explain the emergence of this concept and the convergence in its recent development. On the one hand, due to the growing inequalities in society and education; on the other hand, because the conceptualization of educational justice has emerged to change actions and shape future expectations, which, generally, alludes to the equitable distribution of learning or knowledge relevant to contemporary society. Finally, it draws up the internationalization of national discourses, which have led to particular hybrids around the conception and the implementation of educational justice. It is concluded pointing out some convergent trend in speeches, but variation in practices derived from each national tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of an educational project aimed at promoting the development of critical thinking and promote interest in experimental sciences in High Schools and College students is presented. In this paper, we made a compilation of several activities, which ways of integrating information technology and communication (ICT) in various experiments of science, which together can be used to implement a low cost "classroom-laboratory". With ICT we refer to the convergence of computers, software, audiovisual systems, Internet, telephone, and other equipment that integrates with some of these devices. To this end, several projects were developed, that can be transferred to high schools and colleges settings, with limited financial resources, as is frequent in Latin America. The projects highlight the methodological aspects of science and seek to integrate areas such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science, art, etc. They aim to answer the questions: how do we know this?, why do we believe in that? These questions illustrate the nature of scientific thought. With the advent of programs such as "One Laptop per Child" that are being implemented in several Latin American countries, it is appropriate to use these resources as a basis to generate low cost laboratories. This contribution may be a useful tool to improve the quality of science learning and to encourage vocations in science and engineering. Furthermore, the development of a critical thinking, along with acquisition of skills in the use of ICT, can be essential in many academic and professional fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we aim to address some issues of equity in higher education, from the particular perspective of Latin American reality. Our interest is highlight the fact of the theoretical and methodological positions through which equity policies are defined in the field of higher education and how social meanings and ways are established around them. In the first part, a brief description of the scenarios of higher education in Latin America is done, both in regard to the socio-political structural processes and the dynamics of higher education systems. In the second part, a conceptual reconstruction is approached to allow us to show the movements operating in university policies in recent decades which have resulted in the implementation of the so called policies of equity. In the third part of the paper, different levels of specification of the concept of equity in university dynamics are analyzed, which account for their productive potential practices. Finally, we describe some of the most important initiatives displayed in recent years by some countries of the region framed in equity policies, focusing on their effects and scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of education as the core of the integration processes in Latin America. Vindicates the principles of Simon Bolivar and his teacher Simon Rodriguez, who considered our identity expressed in the strengths that unite Latin as the common language, culture and religion, which are fundamental to any integration process to strengthen our country's subjugation of major powers covered in their technological capacity could impose its conditions. It states that any process of social development is linked to education. This is the essence of the human capacity to foster innovation inventiveness and creativity. Predisposes education energies that contribute to human development. This article attempts to demystify other criteria, in the sense of believing that some factors, such as trade and institutionalization alone contribute to development. They are multi-causal factors associated, where education is the main enabling this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a literature review that considers documents and research work on environmental education (EA) in general, and on EA and legislation in particular, produced at the international, regional and national levels, and guided by the questions: What do works linking EA and education in Argentine legislation contend? In what context, within the EA field, are they inserted? Through the referred reviews we characterize the EA international and Latin American panorama, and analyze the contributions of five articles and a book relevant to our focus on Argentina. Without claiming to have done thorough research, this approach allowed us to perceive the need to deepen the studies that, apart from describing the content of the various laws, analyze its meaning in the historical context in which each regulation was passed, as well as the relationship between forces in the field of environmental education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education Against the Tide in Latin American Prisons: education versus punishment. Promoting education in prison is latterly a difficult task. This paper's objective is to examine the structural causes of this complex situation. We have accomplished a research on official documents and laws, and visited prisons in many Latin American countries, in order to produce this study. Among the many discussed issues, we may highlight: impunity and the failure of the justice system; the limits of punishment; punishment as an ideology; the punishment imagery and the institutional contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact on total factor productivity (TFP) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and in other developing countries of trade-related technology diffusion from the North (denoted by NRD), education, and governance. The NRD of developing countries is defined as a weighted sum of R&D stocks in the North, with weights related to openness with the North's trading partners. Industryspecific NRD is based on the North's industry-specific R&D stocks, North-South trade patterns, and input-output relations in the South. The main findings are that: i) the impact of education and governance on TFP is significantly larger in LAC than in other developing countries, while the opposite holds for NRD; ii) education, governance and NRD have additional effects on TFP in LAC's R&D-intensive industries through their interaction with the other two variables; and iii) since NRD increases with openness to the North and with the North's R&D stocks, both variables raise the South's TFP directly as well as through interaction with education and governance. These interaction effects imply that increasing the level of any of the three policy variables — education, governance or openness — results in virtuous growth cycles. These are smallest for an increase in one of these variables, stronger for an increase in two of them, and strongest for an increase in all three variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the actual debate on citizenship within democracy, admitting a crisis in educational matters is highly relevant (NUSSBAUM, 2010; BERKOWITZ, 2001). Thus, if we want to understand why the ancient educational image is problematic and unsatisfying to the citizens of democratic governments, it is unavoidable, from the history of philosophy point of view, to quote the teaching of preeminent political theorists. Needless to say, the power of education in forming people's character and opinions is widely recognized. Nonetheless, by looking at the history of the institution, it seems obvious that its purpose is not only to form habits but to circumscribe the knowledge of the persons in such a way as to make one set of opinions always inevitable (RUSSELL, 1961). Current paper reveals the theoretical presuppositions of the political and educational doctrines of two main figures of Ancient and Modern times, namely, Aristotle and Locke, respectively. Further considerations will ensue on whether the ancient image of virtue, or its antagonism and possible use in liberalism, has any power to represent the present conditions of equity and justice sought after in civil life within Latin American democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of research on socioeconomic inequality in Bogota's secondary education (year 2009). The results show that socioeconomic student level is significantly associated both to educational access (public or private), and to educational quality (ranking in State test - ICFES). This demonstrates that in Bogotá not only does each social class study separately, but also that rich people have access to a better education than poor people. This situation of social segregation (apartheid) aggravates some of the already pervasive Colombian problems: lack social mobility, economic inequality and illegitimacy of the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of my paper is to make a balance in the rural school historiography in Mexico, and through it, dialogue with those made in other Latin American countries. Instead of trying to have a joint vision of rural educational development in Latin America through a supposed progress, what really interests is to go beyond national barriers with the purpose of generating a debate about the heterogeneity of different local realities and theoretical-methodological perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper picks up the discussion on Norbert Elias' social development concept, as a theoretical model which may contribute to the sociologic and historical studies on indigenous peoples in Latin America. Highlighting the case of Manuel Quintín Lame in Colombia, overcoming the traditional visions of social scientists and aiming at new cognitive instruments is suggested here, in order to achieve a reading in the light of notions of figuration, process continuity and intercultural education. The aim is to go beyond the genealogic explanations with the subsequent search of alternatives in process sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to analyze the sensibilities manifest in contemporary mass culture, starting with a proper conceptualization followed by empirical research of mainstream narrative genres. The sustained presence of veristic and biographical genres plus the rise of fantastic genres, reveal a set of peculiarities that allows a better understanding of cultures emotional nuances. In this paper I will examine the different genres and their meaning and at the same time the public's preferences will be pondered by comparing sales of books and movie house attendances in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain in 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers some guidelines for the characterization and development of college pastoral work, understood as a specific form of the service to the faith and the promotion of justice intrinsically implied by this service, through a communicative offer of a dialogal, interpersonal and social character, inseparable from an inculturated proposal- i.e., intimately fused with the concrete cultural reality, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our communities of higher education directed by the Society of Jesus in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently there is a significant amount of information that refers to the generation of knowledge about teaching and learning modalities supported by technologies. This paper gives an outline of the work between 2003 and 2013 that has been published in Latin America through scientific media type. The purpose of this study was to identify the countries of origin, the thematic areas addressed, the methodology and the main discoveries. It was found that there is a tendency to make publications lacking of descriptive empirical referent; there are few publications that refer to research on mixed research paradigms, quantitative or qualitative. Similarly it was found that the information collected mainly comes from some specific areas such as psychology, education, economics, and computer science, among others; and there are few works that are focused on the development of research scientific production; this scientific area is weak, but it is at the same time an area of opportunity to be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]