Numerous studies have analysed the relationships between the implementation of the railroad within a territory and the demographic, urban, or economic development in that territory. The aim of this study deviates somewhat to focus on the possible repercussions of the railroad line in terms of reducing illiteracy rates in Extremadura (Spain)…

Could a school initiative modify pro-environmental behaviors in an entire village? For three years (2016-2018), the School Agenda 21 program was implemented in a rural primary school in Spain. The study evaluated participants' perceptions (64 students, 48 parents, 11 teachers, and 22 town residents) through qualitative questionnaires after the…

This study provides new evidence on the advance of literacy in Spain during the period 1860-1930. A novel dataset, built with historical information from the Spanish population censuses (over 8000 municipalities), enables this process to be described in detail from the end of the "Ancien Régime" to the Second Republic. The study thus…

Recent studies, supported by the European project "Europe Engage -- Developing a Culture of Civic Engagement through Service-Learning within Higher Education in Europe," suggest that service-learning (SL) is an effective approach to develop personal and social learning linked to real contexts. This particular case study analyses the…

This Report Card offers an assessment of child well-being in the context of sustainable development across 41 countries of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Specifically, this report seeks to bring the SDG [Sustainable Development Goal] targets for children in high-income countries into…

In multicultural contexts, school principals and educators face unique challenges integrating disadvantaged and immigrant youth. We investigate how these leaders advocate, design and implement social justice pedagogies for inclusion. Drawing on an interdisciplinary literature and in-depth interviews with school principals in Melilla (Spain), we…

The article proposes and illustrates a methodological framework that aligns with the action-research models and utopian methodology in particular, although it represents a more substantial leap forward, especially regarding the distributed nature of decision making in the different processes of research/intervention, and its multiple and…

Our research is a comparative qualitative study. The material has been gathered from the cities of Helsinki and Catania. The target cities showcase varied successes and models of smart cities. In the cities, key people involved in the smart city concept--with different kinds of professional backgrounds--were interviewed, both individually and in…

This article deals with the debate on the assessment of pupils' socioeconomic dispersion among schools. First, the paper complements the traditional way of measuring "segregation," which refers to the distribution of a specific subgroup of pupils across different schools, by introducing a new measure which we call "school…

There is a growing literature on the assessment of quality of life conditions in geographically and/or politically divided regions. Sometimes these territories are countries within a specified supranational structure, such as the European Union, for instance, and sometimes they are regions within countries. There is also some research that focuses…

Nowadays, there is a wide debate about what rural means. An operational definition of rural concept is essential in order to measure health problems, optimize resource allocation and facilitate decision making aimed at closing the gap on inequity between areas. In 2005, the rurality index for Small Areas in Spain (IRAP) was developed using the…

The term deprivation is often used to refer to economic or social shortages in a given geographical area. This concept of deprivation has been identified for years using simple indicators such as income level, education and social class. One of the advantages of using simple indicators is the availability of data, since they come directly from…

An operational definition for "rural area" is pivotal if proposals, policies and decisions aimed at optimising the distribution of resources, closing the gap on inequity between areas and raising standards of living for the least advantaged populations are to be put in place. The concept of rurality, however, is often based on…

Do cities have an optimal size? In seeking to answer this question, various theories, including Optimal City Size Theory, the supply-oriented dynamic approach and the city network paradigm, have been forwarded that considered a city's population size as a determinant of location costs and benefits. However, the generalised growth in wealth that…