Playgrounds: Safe designs and infrastructures for our children… an urgent matter in Costa Rica

The purpose of this article is to offer the design and infrastructure parameters necessary to have safe playgrounds since they represent a unique opportunity to foster an integral development, particularly in children.  In these public places, children learn to resolve conflicts to continue playing, having fun, and developing.  These recreational areas then become learning places that foster the formation process and provide great social, emotional, physical, cognitive, intellectual, and spiritual benefits.  However, such benefits are diminished by the lack of interest of the communities and the adult population to optimize playground conditions and by unscrupulous developers, who design playgrounds in inappropriate places putting the population at risk.  Therefore, the following must be taken seriously into consideration before, during, and after the construction of a playground: design, construction, materials, equipment, components and the procedures to meet the necessary safety requirements and the objective for which they were created, that being an area designed, equipped, and located exclusively for playing that facilitates the integral development of the population.  Consequently, it is urgent for Costa Rica to enact clear regulations that guarantee the construction, design, and use of playgrounds that do not put the population’s health at risk, prevent accidents, and guarantee the inalienable rights of each Costa Rican.

Componentes teóricos para la comprensión de la pedagogía intercultural como práctica docente

Nowadays, a topic that arises in the educational domain as an answer to the demands of an increasingly diverse society which also demands processes of inclusion is, without a doubt, the concept of interculturalism. There are several conceptual approaches that are far from creating a pedagogy of interculturalism, specially when interculturalism is valued as a philosophy, which requires the development of a new teacher who is not only capable of recycling him/herself but who is also aware of the paradigmatic changes that interculturalism demands. The article presents an approach to the theoretical components for the understanding of intercultural pedagogy as an educational practice. It begins with a brief presentation of the current educational system, followed by the interpretation of human rights as a fundamental issue of human diversity, and certain approaches and clarification models for interculturalism in elementary school. Finally, the article briefly discusses some of teacher’s intercultural competencies in the face of such diversity.