Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

GENERAL RULESGENERAL RULES The Journal of the Faculty of Human Medicine of the Ricardo Palma University (http://revistas.urp.edu.pe/index.php/RFMH) is aquarterly scientific journal, which publishes original articles in Spanish and English, and will consider for publicationthose works related to public health, surgery, clinical sciences and basic sciences, said works must not have beenpreviously published, nor sent simultaneously to other scientific journals. The magazine of the Faculty of Human Medicine (RFMH) of the Ricardo Palma University adheres to the recommendations of theInternational Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org).

On the western side of the circumpuna in the Atacama Desert, along ecorefuges with favorable resources in the surrounding areas, the Late Archaic hunter-gatherers of the Puripica-Tulán phase (ca. 2600 to 1900 BC) initiated a process of “Neolithic” changes that included the domestication and breeding of camelids and that culminated in the Tilocalar phase (ca. 1200 a 550/430 BC). Among Late Archaic sites, Tulán-52 stands out by its aggregated and complex stone structures and can be considered as a prototype of ceremonial centres. Its innovative features continued in the archetypal Early Formative centre of Tulán-54, at a time when subsistence then included hunting, pastoralism and horticulture. Within a context of increasing social complexity, diverse rituals associated with feasting took place in both ceremonial centres. The latter led to the accumulation of food remains, tools and ornaments production remains, hearths and sediment, creating mounds that deliberately covered the ceremonial structures, under the guidance of emerging leadership.

The following article contributes to the discussion of intermediate cities and their dynamics of intermediation. Although it is recognized the theoretical advancement generated in this field of research in the recent years, the article questions its tendency to homogenize the understanding of these types of cities. The article suggests that it is necessary to comprehend the intermediate cities from their constitutive social practices. From this perspective, the notion of place is introduced as a vital aspect to understand the process of intermediation and the particularity of each urban system. From some key constitutive aspects of the notion of place suggested by Massey (2012) the article empirically examines social practices and tensions that are part of the dynamics of intermediation in three case studies. It is argued that this conceptual approach contributes to the development of a more appropriate and relational understanding of intermediate cities and their respective dynamics of intermediation. The area of study is in the La Araucanía Region, specifically in the intermediate and intercultural cities of Villarrica, Angol and Victoria.

Within the framework of a discussion on the redefinition of the urban and the growth trends of the city of Santiago in the last decades, this work analyzes the influence of Santiago on its regional environment and the urban growth resulting from explosion and implosion processes. in the period 1992 - 2012 that have made the real limits of the Metropolitan Area of Santiago more complex. First, through the application of the OECD’s Functional Urban Areas methodology (2012) for the years 2002 - 2012, the limits of the city were redefined from the 34 traditional communes to 48 communes that are divided into a nucleus and a hinterland, which generates a better territorial understanding of the metropolitan phenomenon. Secondly, the supervised interpretation of satellite images allows us to identify a new urban form characterized by a new geography, in which the growth within the city and to the periphery has taken place in parallel. The application of mixed methodologies that analyze the urban allows us to understand that urbanization is a process, in which the form is only the result of many factors.

In the Chilean Basic Education, the most relevant Geography contents are spatial location, identification of elements of the Landscape, system of cartographic references and Environment. This concept has the greatest presence in the curriculum, lacking a clear conceptualization and dispossessed of relationships with other geographic concepts. An approximation to the concept of the Environment is presented in this text, based on the meanings given by the professors, investigating the relationship between the Environment and the contents of the School Geography. This, in the framework of an interpretative research with an intentional sample of 45 rural teachers from 3 regions of Chile, conducting semi-structured interviews, Data Content Analysis and Theoretical Triangulation. The results show three meanings of Environment: linked to care-recycling-cleaning, synonym of environment and linked to the concern for deterioration. Finally some professors relate Environment with problems that School Geography should teach.

Spatial knowledge allows to revalue citizen participation, coexistence, school and borough, deep ethical processes, all oriented towards a more just, solidary, democratic society that overcomes socio-educational inequalities. In this sense, this work explores diff erent theoretical-conceptual positions that proposed a general framework that allows reflecting on the geographic dimension centered on the subject, to stress a renewal of Geographic Education in Chile. The diff erent “turns” that Human and Social Geography have experienced have meant the rethinking of the “scale” of analysis and the context in which spatial phenomena are made, claiming the socio-spatial importance that the borough community has in the educational processes, including new methodologies for their treatment, such as, for example, the Participatory Action Research (IAP) and the socalled Learning Communities.

Geographical thinking development is one of the main current topics in geography education. Though, according to the scientific literature, this is key for educating geographically informed citizens, empirical studies on the subject in geography teacher training are limited. This paper reports the results from a case study that examined some categories that may help evidence the development of geographical thinking. For this study, a sample of 45 students from the Geography Teaching Program of the Federal University of Goías, Brazil, was selected. The research method consisted in analyzing the contents of learning activities developed by these students during their teaching practice. Our findings showed that the learning activities contain items that, according to Vigotsky, may favor concept understanding and high-level thinking development, with an emphasis on geographical thinking processes.

An interesting aspect to study in the major hubs of Chilean Patagonia is the way the several phases of development evolve and increase their sensitivity, by determining the similarities between their labor, functional and productive (linkage) specializations. This research aims to answer this question: Was the development of the major hubs of Chilean Patagonia in 2007 and 2012 stimulated as a result of similarities between their labor, functional and productive (linkage) specializations? The results indicate that, in a majority of cases, the coherence between those aspects stimulates the development of these regions, as well as the increment of their economic relations’ density.

The objective of this conceptual paper was to explore how teachers’ practice was problematised in the field of geography education. Research in geography didactics and curriculum making are two fields that have been relevant to build the understanding on teachers practice in geography. The challenge for geography education therefore appears to be how to understand the relationships between the two in coherent and systematic ways. This paper engages with the specific meaning of being a subject specialist and the gap in the literature between curriculum making and didactics to understand that specialisation. A second gap is identified regarding the relationship between teacher practice and the professional practices encircling in-classroom activities. The paper finalises suggesting the use of the term expertise to address the dynamics of specialisation in a subject but also with its implication to teachers’ professional practice.

The constitution of citizenship is a significant subject in basic education, and the reflection about the contribution of geographycal education sustains the hypothesis of this analysis focused on the argumentation that through geography there are possible paths towards the citizen formation. To understand the development of the process of education towards citizenship through geography in schools, the place is defined as concept of space of living for the students, and the textbooks have central role in it. The theoretical and methodological basis, as well as the hermeneutical critique, sustain the interpretation of data produced from interviews with teachers and the analysis of textbooks. It is verified that geographycal education is understood as the possibility opportunizing the constitution of the citizen through studying geographic matter. However, in the practical actions in schools and the matter of the textbooks, the learning process is reduced to simple repetition of written knowledge.