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El Sistema is a Venezuelan program of social change that has inspired a worldwide movement in music education. El Sistema inspires social transformation and musical excellence to occur simultaneously and symbiotically. This study examines: What does El Sistema look like within the context of a public school partnership in the United States? How do the characteristics of this context influence the realization of El Sistema principles? This qualitative case study examines one fledgling music program just two years into its partnership with a public school. The study utilizes ethnographic observations and focus group interviews with the young program participants, their parents, schoolteachers, and music teaching artists. I discuss these multiple perspectives according to the fundamentals of El Sistema: a) social change; b) community; c) access; and d) frequency. Findings indicate El Sistema values are capable of impact, but not without struggle, when allied with a public school partnership.

Every day, almost one billion children around the world experience violent punishment. Eliminating all violence against children is a key target of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is a monumental challenge due to the diversity of cultural, economic and social contexts in which children live. Violence-prevention programs developed in wealthy countries cannot be assumed to be transferable to low- and middle-income countries. We assessed the relevance of Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) to 525 parents living in countries with high (n = 201), medium (n = 166), or low (n = 158) Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Indices. The outcome measures were parents' satisfaction with the program and their perceptions of its impact on their parenting. Across IHDI categories, almost all parents were "mostly" or "very satisfied" with the overall program (98.4%), the PDEP parent book (97.9%), and the program activities (97.8%). Parent satisfaction scores were higher in the Low IHDI category than in the High IHDI category. Across IHDI categories, large majorities of parents perceived PDEP as having positive impacts on their parenting. While parents in the Medium IHDI category had the strongest perceptions of PDEP's positive impact, more than 90% of parents in the Low IHDI category believed that the program will help them to understand their children's development and feelings, communicate better with their children, control their anger, and build stronger relationships with their children. PDEP is a promising tool for preventing punitive violence against children across human development contexts.

Latino children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder later in life, usually with more severe symptoms, and lower IQs, compared with non-Latino children. Possible reasons for such disparities could be due to lower levels of parent education, lower socioeconomic status, limited knowledge of parents about autism spectrum disorder, and diminished health-care knowledge. The goal of the study was to describe the age of parental concerns and at first autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, and factors associated with age at the first diagnosis in a sample of Venezuelan children. Diagnostic and demographic data were collected from 103 children between 2 and 7 years of age. Although the mean age of first concerns was 17 months, the age of diagnosis varied from 53.03 months for the Pervasive Developmental Disorders--Not Otherwise specified group to 54.38 months for the autism group. Although parents were aware of developmental difficulties before the second year of life, their children were diagnosed 36 months later. In Latin cultures, behavior problems are usually attributed to poor parenting skills, so parents might take longer to seek professional help. A better understanding of cultural influences on age of diagnosis will translate to quicker use of services independent of ethnicity.

The purpose of this study was to examine the benefits, challenges, program characteristics and instructional approaches of an El Sistema inspired (ESI) after-school string program developed as a university-school partnership. Case study methodology was used to examine the program. Fifth-grade students received 75 minutes of after-school instruction four days per week. Two graduate students in music performance and the elementary school orchestra/general music teacher were the program's lead teachers. Eight additional university students gave pull-out lessons. The program featured many "distinguishing characteristics" described in the ESI literature. The learning environment included large ensemble, sectional learning, and individual lessons. The repertoire learned was standard for American beginning string classes. Teachers provided rigorous expectations for the students to strive for excellence, a safe and supportive learning environment, flexible teaching, and peer-mentoring opportunities. Benefits included high levels of musical achievement, increased learning opportunities, perceived benefits of discipline, perseverance, positive attitude, and hard work. Instructional challenges included low attendance, curricular balance, and teacher collaboration. The intensity and frequency of instruction were found to be the source of most benefits and challenges reported by the participants.

Mako [ISO 639-3: wpc], a Sáliban language spoken along the Ventuari River in the Venezuelan Amazon, has been variably reported as (critically) endangered and threatened. These reports, however, are based on second-hand information and/or self-reported census data. In this article, I present a vitality assessment of Mako that relies on first-hand fieldwork data from 20 communities in the Middle Ventuari River area. The analysis of the data--collected through interviews, community censuses, and participant observation between 2012 and 2014--shows that the situation is not as dire as previously reported and that the language is very vital in its local context. I also show that the place of Mako in the regional and national contexts put it in a vulnerable position and that steps should be taken to ensure its presence in new domains of use. Methodologically, I show the importance--and argue in favor--of including data from long-term participant observation in analyses and reports of linguistic vitality because of the access this methodology provides to tacit knowledge about language use and attitudes. This work thus contributes both to our understanding of language vitality among the Mako communities and to discussions of best practices in language vitality assessments.

In recent decades, many Latin American governments have implemented policies to expand opportunities in higher education, aiming at reducing discrimination and social inequalities. These policies have taken different forms, according to the peculiarities of the respective higher education systems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope and limitations of these policies. We develop our analysis of theoretical literature on the subject, and review empirical information available from secondary sources of recent experience in five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela. Argentina has increased opportunities for disadvantaged social sectors by expanding the public sector. Brazil has attempted to improve access for ethnic and social minorities in both public and private institutions. Chile is a unique case because of the continuing commitment to allow market forces to shape higher education. In Mexico, increased opportunities for access have resulted from the creation of intercultural universities and technical institutions in the public sector, as well as through growth in the private sector. Finally, in Venezuela, expansion occurred through the creation of a new system of universities that operates in parallel to traditional public institutions. We note that, in all cases, the policies reflect an underlying belief that there are only benefits to unlimited expansion, without regard to possible consequences, such as an excess of university graduates in economies with limited job opportunities for them. Moreover, these policies do not take into consideration the deficit of cultural and educational capital of young people who come from the most marginalised social sectors, deficits that may hinder their success. Concepts such as 'overeducation' or 'credencialism' call into question that optimistic belief and explain the limitations of the coverage expansion in terms of real democratisation.

One of the challenges of population aging is to ensure that there are enough trained professionals to meet the changing, specific needs of aging populations. The aim of this study was to describe the number, geographical distribution, and general characteristics of gerontological training programs offered by Latin American universities and to analyze their disciplinary content and the degree of similarity among programs. One hundred undergraduate and postgraduate programs with gerontological content were found to be offered by Latin American universities. Information on the institutional affiliation, academic level, management, length, and content of the programs was analyzed. Descriptive statistics were run and content analysis was performed on the programs' syllabuses to address the objectives of the study. Results show that despite being a relatively young region of the world, the majority of Latin American universities offer gerontological programs. However, the nature of this course offering seems to be quite diverse across countries. Moreover, the analysis of the programs' disciplinary content indicates that the program providers take a multidisciplinary approach to gerontology. The great diversity of programs and their multidisciplinary contents suggest a low degree of standardization of gerontological training in Latin America.

This study seeks to explain macrolevel drivers of adolescent fertility rate using a panel data set derived from 17 Latin American countries over a period of 16 years (1997-2012). While many studies of adolescent fertility have focused on individual-level explanations, this study explores whether adolescent fertility rate is correlated to country-level determinants, specifically legislation adoption that guarantees access to school-based sexuality education, emergency contraception, and abortion. After controlling for other country-level factors, we find that countries that have adopted legislation on school-based sexuality education and those with legal access to abortion (under one or more restrictions) have lower adolescent fertility rates.

This article draws from an education governance approach to conduct a pluri-scalar analysis of equity of access to tertiary education in the context of South-South cooperation. An account of distributional justice in access to tertiary education in the Federative Republic of Brazil and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is integrated with a structural approach related to South-South cooperation among the two nations as well as within the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), upon which two interrelated arguments are developed: first, despite persistent inequities in access to university education in both territories, state-interventionist policies enhance equity of access directly with respect to availability and accessibility. Second, South-South cooperation transforms the background conditions for educational justice by producing an alternative structure to the neoliberal global governance of education and its agenda of privatisation and commercialisation.

A personal description of the international counselor education program at the University of Zulia in Venezuela is presented including educational objectives of the counseling degree, various services counselors are trained to provide, and a sample curriculum. This description serves as an example of one international counselor education program that can be used as a model for burgeoning programs in other countries.

Picture an undocumented student, and for most college counselors, it will be the image of a Latino student. However, the reality is that students from many other ethnic groups lack documentation as well. These students hail from everywhere. According to DreamActivist.org, an online resource network for undocumented students, they come from places such as Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Ecuador, England, Fiji, France, Ghana, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, South Korea, Taiwan, Tonga, and Venezuela. According to one of DreamActivist's founders, Prerna, the network has "black dreamies, brown dreamies, yellow dreamies, white dreamies--a rainbow full of dreamies." "Dreamies" refers to students who would benefit from the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented students who were brought to the US as minors. In this article, the author presents stories of five undocumented students and emphasizes the significant role of counselors in reaching out to this population by making information readily available and maintaining an environment of open dialogue, where no students feel judged.

Venezuela's youth symphony program, the Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar, commonly referred to as "El Sistema," combines musical achievement with learning important life skills through orchestral practice and performance. Although the history most commonly reported outside Venezuela is of the program's director, José Antonio Abreu, hosting a rehearsal of music students in a Caracan parking lot in 1975, El Sistema's origins are equally owed to another orchestra. That same year, arts advocate Juan Martínez founded Venezuela's first children's orchestra in the Venezuelan city of Carora alongside three Chileans who previously taught for a similar program in Chile. I show that the two orchestras were frequent collaborators in the 1975-1977 period, a relationship that was essential in securing government and public support for the nascent Venezuelan program. I combine oral history and historiography to detail how the project in Carora began, define its relationship with Abreu's orchestra in Caracas, and describe its pedagogy, philosophy, and funding. Beyond illuminating a historical narrative that highlights the importance of both national and international cooperation in the development of youth orchestras in Venezuela, this research has broad implications for advocacy and development of musical programs, within and outside schools.

El Sistema sits somewhere between a social project and a classical music initiative. However, its promise of delivering upward mobility has not been sufficiently examined as a structural phenomenon which dovetails with critical policy issues in taxation, educational provision, human rights, and welfare. This article argues that Sistema-style projects ought to be analyzed in relation to the withdrawal of the state's left-hand (e.g. education, health, and welfare). The downgrading of this side of state action is widely characterized as neoliberalism, which is opposed by recent Venezuelan governments. Yet the number of children and youths that can be brought under a conductor's baton seems to blind policy makers and media pundits to the dramatic failures of El Sistema to deliver on its claims. Therefore, it ought to be asked: what does El Sistema actually promote at home, and increasingly, abroad, through its international offshoots? The answer, it is argued, is an unreasonable belief in meritocracy and upward mobility.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the music educational program of El Sistema Sweden is advertised and legitimized through moving images. The films are a major part of the information on the Swedish national website of El Sistema and are supposed to contribute to the picture that the organization and its founders wish to market. The use of moving images and sounds, actors, backgrounds and environments, artefacts, and music in two short films are analyzed with the help of discursive tools from discourse theories, multimodal analysis, and pictorial semiotics. From a social constructionist perspective, and within a frame of contemporary debates within music education and philosophy of music, the article argues for the need to consider both governing moral values and the objectification of music when making claims for social development and integration through music education.

The explosive growth of Venezuela's "El Sistema" is rewriting the agenda of musical education in the West. Many commentators from the world of classical music react to the spectacle of dedicated young colonial musicians playing European masterworks as a kind of "miracle," accepting "Sistema" founder José Antonio Abreu's claim that, in Venezuela, "material poverty is being overcome by spiritual affluence." This essay attempts to clarify the epistemological slippage inherent in such talk, which deliberately conflates old-fashioned idealist notions of classical music's spiritual power with utilitarian justifications of music education as social engineering. In Los Angeles, Abreu's slippery rhetoric has been of great use to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which under the canny leadership of chief executive Deborah Borda and Abreu protégé Gustavo Dudamel has turned "El Sistema's" rhetoric of social justice ("music is a fundamental human right") into a hip consumer brand.

Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" is conceptualised as an anti-neoliberal project that aims to promote fundamental changes in the configuration of political power via processes of state-grassroots collaboration. Central to this process is an emphasis on the key role of education in the development of a 21st Century socialism based on principles of protagonist participation and democratic socialism. While many education policies claim to encourage the participation of citizens and the idea of the "democratic person", and have used the language of liberation, empowerment and justice, very few state-led initiatives have shown a clear commitment to creating spaces and opportunities whereby people can develop critical consciousness and become active agents in the restructuring of state-society relations. While many see developing critical literacy in a state-based education system as an oxymoron, the current process of state-promoted social change in Venezuela offers a rare opportunity to examine how state-sponsored education to promote protagonist, participatory democracy might develop in practice. This article therefore uses the Venezuelan case to examine the extent to which discourse has been put into practice, thereby shedding light on the possibility of state-grassroots collaboration to promote education for critical consciousness and structural change. A bibliography is provided.

Specialized literature shows that counseling and guidance represents an interdisciplinary profession, practiced differently in various Latin American countries. Likewise, counseling and guidance is understood as being a multicontextual and politically worthy profession that is connected to the personal, socioeconomic, cultural, and collective development of people and their countries. In this context, one of the most critical current issues that the profession is facing is related to the pedagogical issues of training counseling and guidance practitioners in undergraduate programs. This article describes the pedagogical dimensions of training programs at the University of Zulia, Venezuela.

Latin American teachers' unions have stepped into the policymaking sphere and shaped education policies unrelated to regular workplace priorities like salaries and class sizes at notable moments. The literature on teachers' unions in Latin America has not addressed this, tending to focus instead on those unions' history and role in social movements, or their struggles against controversial education reform. This article links existing literatures in an effort to explain why teachers' unions sometimes break from their normal workplace demands to take an active role in education policymaking. Drawing on case studies of Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela, and Guatemala, it argues that teachers' unions break out of this usual role and promulgate system-enhancing education policy in the context of society-wide social movements, such as those that lead to democratization or indigenous rights. However, only where these policies meet a receptive government are they translated from proposal to practice.

This paper examines the trajectories of two characters in Laura Antillano's short story, "Tuna de mar" (1991), as they navigate interrelated systems of power and attempt to position themselves closer to, or further away from, the margins. Set in the late eighteenth century, the tale features a female protagonist who escapes prostitution and joins a pirate fraternity disguised as a man. The male narrator relates her story with an uneven hand, acknowledging her accomplishments while suppressing her voice and perspective, despite having gone through a gender shift of his own. My analysis will reveal the ways in which the protagonist and the narrator rebel against and are reinscribed within hegemonic power structures. I will further analyze the layering of different experiences of marginalization within the story, which provides a context in which to discuss the interdependent nature of colonialism and patriarchy within the history of Maracaibo (Venezuela). Finally, I stress the relevance of this story for considering contemporary Latin American and Caribbean realities, including the marginalization and displacement of sex workers, the gendering of power, and the use of drag as a subversive strategy to undermine global economic as well as patriarchal power structures.

The "Bolivarian Revolution" in Venezuela is conceptualised as a pedagogical project that aims to develop "twenty-first century Socialism" through state-grassroots collaboration in the reorganisation of political space in order to develop participatory, democratic institutions and processes. The cornerstones of this project to deepen and expand democracy in and through education are the adult Education Missions, set up in parallel to existing educational structures, and with an explicit focus on socio-political education and community projects aimed at promoting a new hegemony based on active grassroots citizenship. While the struggle to extend democracy in and through education is not unique to Venezuela, the conceptualisation of democracy as protagonist and participatory, and the explicit links made between education and democratic social change within the broader framework of twenty-first century socialism, makes Venezuela a dynamic site to revisit and reinvigorate classical debates as to the role of education in promoting democratic social change. Based on 15 months of empirical research, this paper examines the extent to which adult education in Venezuela is contributing to the development of a counter-hegemonic movement to build socialism for the twenty-first century.

Purpose: This paper aims to present an approach to achieve accessible and inclusive Virtual Education for all, but especially intended for students with disabilities. This work proposes main steps to take into consideration for stakeholders involved in the educational process related to an inclusive e-Learning. Design/methodology/approach: The paper pays particular regard to accessibility in Virtual Education. This work is based on the activities prepared from years 2012 to 2015 within the initiative called ESVI-AL. This initiative was carried out in conjunction with Latin American and European Universities; for this paper, experiences and best practices from the initiative were used to prepare the proposed approach. Findings: The aim of ESVI-AL initiative was to offer products that can help in the development of an accessible and inclusive e-Learning education. Among the main results were reports, case studies, practical guidelines, training courses and software to install virtual campuses with accessibility features. Social implications: Nowadays, few countries have laws promoting and enforcing accessibility for e-Education and e-Society. This work aims to sensitize educators from different countries and raise awareness on the importance of working together toward an inclusive society based on accessible e-Learning. Originality/value: Based on a literature review and ESVI-AL initiative results, a descriptive overview was prepared as a starting point for the four identified main actors of an educational project, namely, educators, technical staff, quality auditors and students, with special emphasis on students with disabilities.