Historical legacies and use of corporal punishments of children in families in Italy

The paper focuses on the corporal punishments of children in families in Italy, using a historical, legal and comparative perspective. Despite international legislation protecting children by excluding any form of corporal punishment, in Italy, the law confirms a right of the parent to correction. With empirical evidence in mind, which suggests that country legislation is one element that affects indirectly the parental behaviors, and that legislation is legacy of the country's history, a historical-critical and comparative analysis becomes central to a real understanding of the corporal punishments which continue to be perpetrated to harm of childre

FAIRY TALES YESTERDAY AND TODAY. REVIEW OF ARTICONI A., CAGNOLATI A. (EDS.), LE METAMORFOSI DELLA FIABA, TAB EDIZIONI, ROMA, 2020

The review of “Le metamorfosi della fiaba” underlines the importance of concepts such as meta-history and metamorphism in the study of fairy tales. The collection of essays displays a variety of approaches, which allows the reader to tackle this issue from very different points of view. Particular attention is paid to the re-creation and re-mediation of fairy tales according to different narrative media, from oral story to musical theater, from cinema to picture books. The overall impression given by the book is that the metamorphoses of the fairy tale continue to confirm its significance even today and through a symbolic and figurative language reveals the variety of relationships between human beings in an intuitive and polysemantic wa

Fertility trends and its determinants in Spain and Europe

European demography and fertility is a colorful mosaic that reflects a variety of cultures and institutions across different countries. There is considerable subnational variation in fertility levels, therefore the national average values often hide important local differences. Previous research has shown different factors to have an impact on fertility tempo and quantum, such as economic contraction, social transformations, and the rise of migration. Such changes have not spread homogeneously, but with a different pace and intensity across European countries. This thesis aims to obtain more insight into the geographical variation in fertility changes in Europe, and to identify the role of a number of major factors behind this geographical variation, both at the macro level for European countries, and at the micro level for Spanish regions. The socio-economic factors involved in the transformation of fertility in Spain, is conducted at subnational level employing small territorial units, and constructing demographic and socio-economic indicators, which encompass fertility for the past forty years. Although fertility in most European countries is below replacement, the two child ideal is still very much the norm. Results show the factors that allow fulfilling childbearing ideals and how they differ between Western and Eastern Europe. Attitudes towards childbearing can change after entering a union, but individuals who are more oriented towards childbearing may be more determined to form unions. There is a positive significant causal relationship of entering a union on attitudes towards parenthood among men, whereas the effect is weaker or uncertain for women

The Think-Aloud approach: A Promising Tool for Online Reading Comprehension

Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there has been little research on online reading and there is a lack of attention paid to this topic in most European educational institutions. In particular, primary and secondary school teachers are not adequately trained on how and when to intervene to support students’ proficiency in the online reading comprehension. After presenting a rationale demonstrating why students may struggle with online reading comprehension and the importance to adopt a self-regulated reading, this study proposes a Teacher’s Guide that could support late primary and secondary school teachers in planning online reading lessons with the Think-Aloud (TA) metacognitive technique

The epidemiology of breast cancer, a summary overview

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La cambiante geografía de la fecundidad en España (1981-2018)

The objective of this article is to investigate the variation of fertility across Spain’s geographic areas between 1981 and 2018, to highlight spatial change over three decades of major fertility transformations. During the last decades, Spanish fertility decreased considerably to below replacement levels. Although total fertility remains below replacement level in Spain, there are important differences in subnational trends that seem to concentrate around certain areas. Starting from the assumption that there is fertility diversity across the country, which persists over time and such variation is not random but rather spatially driven, we aim to describe the divergence from national trends and analyse the dynamics of spatial patterns of fertility over time with spatial analysis tools. Using from Spanish municipality data, we use 910 territorial units that ensure spatial contiguity and construct yearly fertility indicators derived from census and register data, encompassing fertility by age, birth order, and age at childbirth. We investigate the spatial patterns of fertility and their changes over time, by means of spatial and correlogram analysis, exploring the effects of neighborhood definitions. Results confirm the presence of spatial autocorrelation for all variables throughout the considered timeframe, both at global and local scale. The considered time frame depicts substantial changes in the distribution of low and high fertility clusters, reshaping the geographical distribution of fertility in Spain, with big metropolitan areas as leaders in high fertility, as childbearing is deeply impacted by labor market covariates. The fertility decline in Spain has driven total fertility to below replacement levels in a short period of time, shifting the classical North-South divide of low-high fertility into an East-West clustering, with economic centres such as cities becoming the new focal points of higher fertility. The descriptive and econometric spatial approaches adopted in this article, together with the detailed data available for this study, make it possible to appreciate the scale of fertility changes across the country, its heterogeneity across regions, and the evolution of fertility determinants over time.El objetivo de este artículo es investigar la variación de la fecundidad en las áreas geográficas infra-provinciales de España entre 1981 y 2018, resaltando el importante cambio espacial que acompañan casi cuatro décadas de transformaciones de la fecundidad. Durante las últimas décadas, la fecundidad española descendió considerablemente hasta situarse por debajo de los niveles de reemplazo. No obstante, existen importantes diferencias geográficas que parecen concentrarse en determinadas áreas del territorio. Partiendo del supuesto preliminar de que existe diversidad de la fecundidad en todo el país, que persiste a lo largo del tiempo y que dicha variación no es aleatoria, sino que está correlacionada espacialmente, nuestro objetivo es analizar la dinámica de los patrones espaciales de fecundidad a lo largo del tiempo con las herramientas propias de la econometría espacial. A partir de los datos de base de los municipios españoles, hemos construido 910 unidades territoriales como agrupaciones de municipios que garantizan la contigüidad espacial y la significación estadística. Con esa información estimamos indicadores de fecundidad anuales de intensidad y calendario derivados de los datos de censos, padrones y del movimiento natural de la población, que abarcan la fecundidad por edad, orden de nacimiento y edad al momento del parto entre 1981 y 2018. Investigamos posteriormente los patrones espaciales de fecundidad y sus cambios en el tiempo, mediante el análisis espacial y la elaboración de correlogramas, explorando los efectos de las definiciones de vecindario. Los resultados confirman la presencia de autocorrelación espacial para todas las variables empleadas en el análisis a lo largo del período considerado, tanto a escala global como local. El marco temporal considerado muestra cambios sustanciales en la distribución de los conglomerados de baja y alta fecundidad, remodelando la histórica distribución geográfica de la fecundidad en España, con las grandes áreas metropolitanas como líderes actuales de una mayor fecundidad, ya que la maternidad se ve profundamente afectada por las covariables del mercado laboral. La disminución de la fecundidad en España ha llevado a la fecundidad total a niveles por debajo de los niveles de reemplazo en un corto período de tiempo, cambiando la división clásica Norte-Sur de fecundidad baja-alta hacia un agrupamiento Este-Oeste, con los centros económicos urbanos que se erigen como los nuevos puntos de mayor fecundidad. Los enfoques espaciales descriptivos y econométricos adoptados en este artículo, junto con los datos geográficos detallados disponibles para este estudio, permiten apreciar la escala de cambios de la fecundidad en todo el país, su heterogeneidad entre regiones y la evolución de los determinantes contextuales de la fecundidad a lo largo de los últimos 40 años