Carolina Andrea Molina-Palencia

Social pedagogy is a science, a practice, and an art that was born from the need to provide an educational response to sociocultural situations and problems that confront individuals, groups, and communities. Participatory evaluation is a methodological strategy in which program evaluation is understood through the construction of shared knowledge, user participation, and collective decision-making. Although both social pedagogy and participatory evaluation have been variously defined in academic debates, an analysis of the intersection between the two is lacking. The main objective of this study is therefore to analyze the relationship and intersections between participatory approaches in evaluation and the scientific discipline of social pedagogy. To this end, a semi-structured questionnaire was designed to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 18 academics in seven countries. The results reveal the importance of eight pedagogical dimensions identified in the development of participatory evaluation, which are defined in this research. The study also discusses the potential and limitations of applying participatory evaluation to socio-educational projects. The aim of this research is to broaden the scientific debate on the intersection between social pedagogy and participatory evaluation, providing data that will improve the implementation of participatory evaluation in social pedagogy, thus encouraging greater user participation in this context.

The parental regulatory focus theory (RFT) suggests that parents or caregivers engage in two broad types of behaviors with their children: promotion focus, which involves promoting positive behaviors, and prevention focus, which involves avoiding negative consequences. The aim of this study is to establish the relationship between attitudes towards childcare and the parental regulatory focus in a sample of caregivers from the Caribbean region of Colombia. The results showed that both the promotion and the prevention focus were related to more positive attitudes towards childcare. It was also possible to identify that those who show a higher degree of presence of both caregiving’s regulatory foci have a more positive attitude towards childcare than those who only favor one of the focuses.

Caring for children is fundamental for their development. It can, however be hindered by the psychological, economic, and contextual conditions of caregivers. This study assessed caregivers’ profiles in a sample of low-income Colombians (n = 495) based on attitudes toward childcare, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, self-efficacy in childcare, and sexist attitudes. Three profiles were identified: the first profile included caregivers with intermediate scores in attitudes towards childcare and self-efficacy, low sexist attitudes and low subjective norms; the second comprised caregivers with lower attitudes towards childcare, self-efficacy, and behavioral intention, with moderate scores in subjective norms and sexist attitudes; the third profile consisted of participants with the most positive attitudes toward childcare, and with the most sexist attitudes towards caregiving. This study shows caregiver profiles in terms of childcare self-perception, dimensions of the theory of planned behavior, and sexist attitudes toward childcare in a population underrepresented in the literature.

Approximately 200 million children worldwide risk not fulfilling their full developmental potential, and most of them come from areas characterized by systematic inequality and scarcity of resources. Because under-five children of families that experience economic deprivation report poorer developmental outcomes, lately greater attention has been directed at studying and intervening in caregiver practices during early childhood. This study aimed to describe childcare practices utilized by caregivers of under-five children (N = 110) residing in a Colombian city; it also sought to test differences in caregiving practices across sociodemographic characteristics. Results from nonparametric statistical analyses showed that caregivers of high- and medium-income families engaged more frequently in tasks related to sleep hygiene (2(2) = 9.34, p = .009, and less negative socio-emotional interactions (e.g., punishment) than low-income peers (2(2) = 9.33, p = .009). Caregivers who were employed or students reported more involvement in sleep hygiene tasks and less negative emotional interactions than homemakers and retired caregivers (w = 1878, p <.001). An increase in the number of children in the household was positively associated with greater negative socioemotional care, r = .21, S = 173556, p = .02. Interventions and public policy would benefit from targeting full-time primary caregivers of low-income children aged 0-5. Particularly, by complementing their competencies to foster socio-emotional development.