Dear Colleagues,

Vulnerable children are exposed to personal, family-related, educational, and social difficulties that aggravate their risk situations. This scenario may remain unchanged until adult life, and even transfer to their descendants. In this regard, education has been proven fundamental because accessing the labor market with basic qualifications allows individuals to overcome the risk situations (1). Therefore, designing procedures and programs that address family, personal, educational, and social environments may help put a stop to permanent vulnerability situations.

Regarding the family dimension, parent-child relationships and raising styles determine the quality of the interactions, which are highly linked to children’s development (2). In this regard, warm relationships, based on support and communication, give way to inductive discipline, which facilitates a balanced development of the child. Conversely, cold relationships, based on psychological control, negative feedback, lack of trust, and aggressiveness, affect children’s development negatively (3).

As per the educational or school dimension, the aim of education planning is the students’ comprehensive training. However, these programs are focused on the contents of formal subjects such as Math, languages, or natural sciences. Socio-emotional training programs usually incorporate the contents of formal subjects into socio-emotional learning, which influences students positively.

In the social dimension, the individual’s development is also obstructed by his or her environment and social atmosphere. This dimension encompasses the mesosystem and the macro-system, that is, the neighborhood, the parents’ job environment, friendships, the access to supplementary educational services, the mass media, social organization, or culture (6, 7).

The social dimension includes the school; academic training offers opportunities for a better life and is paramount for the development of human capital, which is required to fight against poverty (8). Low social strata are related to accessing low-qualification jobs and unhealthy lifestyles such as a poor diet, restricted access to supplementary services, and more probabilities of suffering illnesses related to sight or hearing (9). Furthermore, adolescents belonging to low socioeconomic status (SES) are more prone to associating with rebel peers (10), to consuming alcohol and marihuana at a younger age (11), and to having defying behavior (12) than their counterparts from higher strata are.

This Special Issue seeks research focusing on innovation and educational sustainability, aiming at solving personal vulnerability situations through assessment, programs, or interventions that show the effects in the population. This issue welcomes original, high-quality research based on theoretical, methodological, and empirical research, case studies, and implementation experiences. Accepted topics include:

• Socio-emotional intervention programs at school aiming at solving vulnerability situations.
• Vulnerability and educational innovation.
• Training families on innovation and development to revitalize parent-child relationships regarding social adaptation.
• Effects of socio-emotional education in the development of children and adolescents.
• Sustainability and educational innovation.

Submission instructions:

The Editors want to confer this special number a significant value as regards innovation and educational sustainability. Complete manuscripts must be submitted via email to Ana M. Tur Porcar (Universidad de Valencia; [email protected]) and Alicia Mas Tur (Universidad de Valencia; [email protected]). The papers must not be submitted directly to the Journal. Cover page must include title, name of author(s), and contact details of the corresponding author.

The papers must be original and not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Selected papers for publication will go through a double-blind peer review, following the review procedure of the journal. Final acceptance will be based on relevance of the topic, technical quality, degree of content innovativeness, and originality of the approaches as well as the research results.

All manuscripts sent must be compatible with the journal’s general guidelines.

1. Salvioni, D. M.; Franzoni, S.; Cassano, R. Sustainability in the Higher Education System: An Opportunity to Improve Quality and Image. Sustainability 2017, 9, 914.
2. Ferreira, T., Cadima, J., Matias, M., Vieira, J. M., Leal, T., & Matos, P. M.. Preschool Children’s Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Mother–Child, Father–Child and Teacher–Child Relationships. J. Child Fam. Stud. 2016, 25(6), 1829-1839. DOI: 10.1007/s10826-016-0369-x.
3. Slagt, M., Semon Dubas, J., y Aken, M. A. Differential Susceptibility to Parenting in Middle Childhood: Do Impulsivity, Effortful Control and Negative Emotionality Indicate Susceptibility or Vulnerability? Infant and Child Development 2015, 25(4), 302-324. DOI: 10.1002/icd.1929
4. Jones, S.M.; Brown; J.L.; Aber, J.L. Two-year impacts of a universal school-based social-emotional and literacy intervention: An experiment in translational developmental research. Child. Dev. 2011, 82, 533–554, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01560.x.
5. Tur-Porcar, A., Mas-Tur, A., & Malonda Vidal, E. Long-Term Educational Sustainability: Educational Innovation in Social Vulnerability Contexts. Sustainability 2017, 9(9), 1626. doi:10.3390/su9091626
6. Bronfenbrenner, U. Ecology of the family as a context for human development: research perspectives. Developmental Psychology 1986, 22(6), 723-742.
7. Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. The bioecological model of human development. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology 2006 (6th ed., pp. 793-828). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
8. Battle, J., & Lewis, M. The increasing significance of class: The relative effects of race and socioeconomic status on academic achievement. Journal of Poverty 2002, 6(2), 21-35.
9. Koster, A.; Bosma, H.; van Lenthe, F.J.; Kempen, G.I.; Mackenbach, J.P.; van Eijk, J.T. The role of psychosocial factors in explaining socio-economic differences in mobility decline in a chronically ill population: Results from the GLOBE study. Soc. Sci. Med. 2005, 61, 123–132.
10. Moss, H.B.; Lynch, K.G.; Hardie, T.L. Affiliation with deviant peers among children of substance dependent fathers from pre-adolescence into adolescence: Associations with problem behaviors. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2003, 71, 117–125, doi:10.1016/S0376-8716(03)00073-5.
11. Fothergill, K.E.; Ensminger, M.E. Childhood and adolescent antecedents of drug and alcohol problems: A longitudinal study. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2006, 82, 61–76.
12. Rieh, S.Y.; Lee, B.Y.; Oh, J.G.; Schuetze, T.; Porras Álvarez, S.; Lee, K.; Park, J. Integration of Sustainability into Architectural Education at Accredited Korean Universities. Sustainability 2017, 9, 1121.

Prof. Dr. Ana M. Tur-Porcar
Dr. Alicia Mas-Tur
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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