Palabras clave: profesión e identidad docente, condiciones de trabajo, reformas y ejercicio docente. profession for the purpose of teacher policy making.

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This article presents a study which aimed to explore the professional identity of early childhood teachers in Chile, applying a sociocultural approach. Relying on an exploratory qualitative design, data were collected through focus groups and photo-narratives. The findings show that these teachers understand that child-centred pedagogy is the pillar of their professional identity; that they perceive that this is under threat from the schoolification of early childhood education; and that they admit that their capacity to resist this tendency is limited to the classroom. These findings suggest that, having scarce resources available to negotiate their professional identity in their working context, early childhood teachers in Chile have a limited capacity for agency.

Circumcision has received increased attention for its potential to reduce sexual transmission of HIV. Research on the acceptability of circumcision as a means of HIV prevention among MSM is virtually non-existent. Men who have sex with men (MSM) in Bogotá, Colombia either participated in a focus group in which they shared information regarding their perceptions of circumcision, or completed a survey which assessed circumcision experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and willingness. Few participants reported they were circumcised, yet most participants reported knowing something about the procedure. Overall, attitudes towards circumcision were mixed: although circumcision was viewed as safe, it was also viewed as unnatural and cruel to babies. Beliefs that circumcision could improve sexual functioning and protect against STIs and HIV were not widely endorsed by survey participants, although focus group participants discussed the potential impacts of circumcision on the availability of sexual partners and sexual performance. Some focus group participants and many survey participants reported a hypothetical willingness to get circumcised if strong evidence of its effectiveness could be provided, barriers removed, and recovery time minimised.

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The purpose of this study is to explore the development of creativity in Chilean kindergarten and school children. For this, we evaluated non-verbal divergent and convergent thinking skills in a sample of 320 Chilean kindergarten, second-, fourth- and sixth-grade school children. We found that kindergarten and second-grade children showed a lower performance in creative fluency and originality than fourth-grade and sixth-grade children. In addition, we found that kindergarten and second-grade children had a low performance in creative elaboration, which worsened in the fourth and sixth grades. We did not find differences between the different educational levels in convergent thinking skills. Our results contradict previous international studies that report a stable development of creativity throughout the first few years of schooling, with a transitory slump in the fourth or sixth grade, revealing an early slump of creative skills in Chilean children, which rebound after the fourth grade. We discuss the potential relationship between the academization and rigidization of Chilean early childhood education and the early slump in creativity.