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This paper introduces the state of informal settlements in Latin America and the Caribbean, and it explores potential relationships between informal settlements and national policies on urban development and disaster risk reduction, especially on how risk governance and disaster resilience are conceived and practiced by governments.

17 Habitat III National Reports issued during the preparatory process toward the New Urban Agenda in 2016 are analyzed using statistics and qualitative methods. Some quantitative variables, such as access to drinking water and sewerage in the region, are combined with qualitative data from references to the Sendai Framework and national urban policies in the mentioned reports. Countries in the study include Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

Results show that the situation of informal settlements in the region is complex and presents two different realities that coexist: one group of countries in which provision of basic urban services poses great challenges for a significant proportion of the urban population, while the other group in which urban informality and precariousness persists despite better statistics. Risk governance and disaster resilience principles are scarcely articulated in existing urban development discourses in the region.

The preparatory process toward the New Urban Agenda allowed to conduct an original updated cross-country analysis and to identify cross-cutting issues on informality, risk reduction, and urban development in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evidence-based research strategy (EBRS) used to evaluate eight projects that applied the neighborhood approach for disaster risk reduction (NA-DRR) in informal urban settlements in Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica and Peru, between 2012 and 2017.

The study covers the first five of the seven EBRS stages: first, identify relevant interventions; second, prepare evaluation questions; third, select evidence sources and implement a search strategy; fourth, appraise evidences and identify gaps; fifth, create an evaluation design to include an extensive literature review, followed by a mixed research method with surveys, focus groups and interviews; disaster risk modeling; georeferencing analysis; and engineering inspections. The last two stages: sixth, apply the evidence, and seventh, evaluate the evidence application, will be addressed in a near future.

Even though the reference to “evidence” is frequent in the DRR field, it is largely based on descriptive processes, anecdotal references, best practices, lessons learned and case studies, and particularly deficient on the subject of informal and precariousness settlements. The evaluation allowed a deep and broad analysis of NA-DRR in urban informal settlements, comparing it with other DRR strategies implemented by different stakeholders in fragile urban settings, assessing the effectiveness and sustainability of the various DRR interventions.

The abundant data, information and knowledge generated will serve as foundation for forthcoming thematic peer-reviewed publications informing evidence-based DRR research, policy and practice, with emphasis on informal and precariousness settlements in particular.

This paper examines disaster capitalism in Chile, that is, the relationships between disasters and neoliberalism. It looks at two post-disaster dimensions: disasters as windows of opportunity to introduce political reforms and disasters as occasions for the corporate class to capitalize on such disasters.

Two indices, disaster capitalism (DC) and post-disaster private involvement (PDPI), are proposed for cross-case analysis. They are based on legal records, institutional reports and economic data. The DC assesses the introduction of reforms following disasters, while PDPI evaluates the share of public-private funding used for recovery. Both indices are applied here to two disasters in Chile: the 2010 Maule earthquake, and the 2008 Chaitén volcanic eruption.

Results show that the highly neoliberal Chilean context leaves limited space for new neoliberal reforms. Although recovery is implemented predominantly through the private sector, the state still assumes greater responsibility for recovery costs. Results also detect poor levels of participation from the private sector in accounting their efforts and making them publicly available. Likewise, the research suggests that neoliberal reforms become more likely after disasters. However, the preexisting politico-economic context matters. Finally, there is clearly a need for data systematization in post-disaster recovery.

In the Chilean context, the indices proved beneficial as a strategy for data collection and a method for scrutinizing the implications of neoliberal policy implemented in the wake of disasters, as well as in evaluating the role of the corporate class during recovery.

The focus of special education around the globe may be to provide specialized instruction to meet unique needs of children to help them achieve their full potential. However, each country around the globe may also have its own unique issues, barriers, legal frames, policies, and practices, as well as a history of its origin and evolution of policies and practices that govern special education in that country. This chapter describes how special education in Spain originated and evolved to its current state. It includes the following chapter sections: origins of special education in Spain; legislative acts; prevalence and incidence of various recognized disability areas; an overview of Spain’s education system including special needs education; current assessment and intervention practices; teacher education practices; family involvement considerations; and future challenges to special education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of pre-service teachers (PSTs) who used lesson study on a five-week school-based teaching placement. The paper analyses 12 undergraduate PSTs’ perceptions of the way lesson study affected classroom-based teaching of English as a foreign language to pre-school and primary school.

A qualitative study is carried out from the responses to a semi-structured interview to the PSTs, and written responses to the open-ended question: What are your perceptions of lesson study?

This paper provides empirical insights about the way lesson study reinforced the PSTs’ classroom management and lesson planning skills. The case-pupils’ responses to the PSTs’ questions post-treatment indicated that games and active techniques in the classroom led to high retention of the taught content. Nevertheless, PSTs’ evaluations of pupils’ learning outcomes require further development. These evaluations often resulted in vague perceptions of overall lesson performance.

This study provides hints of how case-pupils better learned and how PSTs did the observations and performed. However, the results cannot be generalized.

The researchers sustain that the teaching degrees should encourage critical thinking in PSTs’ self-evaluations to reduce the focus on standards and expectations. It is believed that if the pressure of designing perfect lessons is removed from the equation, and instead, sensible and realistic lessons are planned, PSTs will be more inclined to learn and respond resourcefully, creatively, and resolutely to classroom situations.

This paper aims to focus on two basic dimensions of group work: cooperation and transfer of information. This paper has two objectives. The first objective is to analyse the effect of cooperation and transfer of information in group work according to employees’ perceptions of the Rioja wine industry. The second objective is to analyse the existence of significant differences in the perception of the basic dimensions of group work under different organisational contexts in the Rioja wine industry.

The participants in the study are 230 workers from the Rioja wine industry. The data is collected through a personal interview using a questionnaire. Hypotheses are tested by multiple regression analysis.

The results indicate firstly that cooperation and transfer of information is related to “group work” variable positively, and secondly, significant differences were found in each of the contexts analysed. Besides, it has been found that the variable “transfer of information” is more explanatory of group work differences in organisational contexts than the variable “cooperation”.

This study verified that there is no homogeneity in group work in the Rioja wine industry. This study contributes to the knowledge about a significant industry of the economy and culture of the Rioja region, and the wine sector in general.

The paper explores the main drivers of the regional-level digital divide in Ecuadorian cities and the extent to which the information and communication technology (ICT) adoption by citizens influences local-level policymakers' decisions to develop eGovernment services.

The paper used an exploratory approach. The authors empirically assessed the provision of eGovernment services in each of the 36 Ecuadorian local governments following the Local Online Service Index (LOSI) measurement scale proposed by the United Nations, and then evaluated the drivers of the eGovernment divide at a local level. Ordinary least squares regression analysis was used.

The findings indicate that the digital divide is driven by income and education disparities, and that eGovernment availability is driven by ICT use. It appears that proper attention to technology use by its citizens is not being given by local-level policymakers in Ecuador when they devise their eGovernment strategy.

Because the data were available at different levels of aggregation, there may be some inaccuracy of the indicators and lack of generalizability. Researchers are encouraged to test this hypotheses with data at lower levels of aggregation and from different latitudes to provide a comparative view between countries.

The paper includes implications for policymakers and local authorities regarding how the limitations on eGovernment development may be mitigated.

This study fulfils the need to assess digital development and its impact on eGovernment services at a city level in a developing country.

Given the profound impact of social media on civic activism, as demonstrated by the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements, the current study aimed to examine the factors that influence the public to engage in civic activism on social media platforms.

This study used the responses from 4,316 social media users who participated in the 2018 American Trends Survey (Wave 35) conducted by Pew Research Center. The dataset was analyzed using hierarchical regression.

The results suggest that respondents who were younger, female, White and liberal were more likely to participate in activism-related behaviors, such as using hashtags, changing profile pictures and participating in groups with shared interests in political and social issues. Respondents' engagement in online civic activism increased particularly when they had a strong motive for expressing and sharing their opinions. In contrast, external online political efficacy – the belief that social media influences policymaking and decision makers – was not significantly associated with activism engagement on social media.

This study identified key demographic characteristics of social media users who participate in online civic activism. In addition, the findings extend previous lines of inquiry by examining and assessing the impact of external online political efficacy and opinion expression motive. We conclude that individuals engage in civic activism on social media mainly because they find it important to express views on political and social issues and to find others who share these views, as opposed to thinking that social media can be used to exert influence on policy decisions.

The purpose of this study is to identify the most frequent themes related with social media governance in government by year, analyzing if these themes have evolved over time, as well as highlighting the main risks and challenges found as further research opportunities.

First, the authors have extracted 431 abstracts from Scopus database. Then, abstracts were grouped by year to apply topic modeling to discover the underlying topics. Specifically, the authors have applied latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm to identify the most frequent topics by year.

The results reveal 19 important topics related with social media governance in government. Then, these topics were assigned to each year to identify the evolution of the research themes over the years, proposing interesting avenues for further research based on the identification of the main risks and challenges.

The proposed research methodology can be applied not only for research purposes but also to discover themes in any discourse with applications in politics, marketing, business, etc. In addition, it can be used to save time and costs analyzing citizen comments in public debates to identify the most important topics.

This study can serve to highlight gaps in the literature, opening the possibility that researchers can adequately position their inquiries, as well as to be aware of overstudied themes to pay less attention to them in future projects. In addition, the results of this study could serve as a starting point for other researchers to analyze connections between topics, propose theories that explain what was found and validate them in future studies.