This Doctoral Dissertation explores the transition that took place in the eighteenth century from the figure of the king as the symbolic representative of the nation to the recently created category of the citizen as the new national metaphor all over the western world. The necessity of creating a positively racialized model of citizen that would serve as a symbolic representative of the nation followed the racial zeitgeist of the time, dictated by imperial expansion together with the creation of new systems of thought such as scientific racism, geographic determinism, or phrenology. Spain, former hegemonic power during Early Modern Europe, was expelled from Modern Europe in the eighteenth century, being displaced for the first time to a racialized southern European periphery at a time when race matched power. Intellectual battles fought through the first stages of the Printed Press and the Encyclopedia, used propaganda to build or destroy national identities. Through an extensive study about foreign views of Spain by France, England, and Latin America, and their reception in Spain, this doctoral dissertation explores Spanish attempts to dislocate Northern European eighteenth and nineteenth centuries epistemologies by creating alternative networks of knowledge and proposing a model of empire where race was not used as a political ideology, with the aim of re-branding itself in the new nation-building landscape of the time.

Trichomycosis axillaris is a common but underdiagnosed condition of the skin. The dermoscopic image of this disease is not previously described in the scientific literature. We believe that dermoscopy is a convenient and interesting diagnostic method that may aid in the diagnosis.

This dissertation explores conceptual and methodological issues related to measuring implementation in quantitative educational research. Implementation, defined as the enactment of interventions in educational contexts, plays a pivotal role in understanding how programs operate and affect student outcomes. Despite its importance, there is significant variability in how implementation is conceptualized, measured, and accounted for in research, reflecting the complex relationship between interventions, schools, and outcomes.The study examines these issues through a two-part approach. First, I conduct a systematic review to analyze the frameworks and constructs used to define implementation in a sample of grants awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The review highlights the tensions between fidelity (adherence to program design) and adaptation (modifications to the original design). It also assesses the data collection instruments, methods of data reduction, and analytical strategies used to incorporate implementation into outcome evaluations. Second, the dissertation uses data from the implementation of the Success for All (SFA) program to illustrate the practical consequences of methodological choices. Using correlations and hierarchical linear modeling, I estimate the association between different operationalizations of implementation and student outcomes. I also explore how implementation affects estimates of the program’s impact, with a particular focus on English Language Learners (ELL) and Special Education (SPED) students. The findings indicate that while higher implementation fidelity correlates with improved outcomes for some groups, it may not benefit others equally, raising concerns about potential inequities. This work underscores the need for nuanced approaches to measuring and accounting for implementation that reconcile fidelity and adaptation frameworks to better understand the schools and classrooms where interventions are delivered. In the context of school improvement, it is especially relevant to consider that adaptations to program design reflect teacher agency and should not be conceptualized only as deviations from the intended intervention.