Published in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Science, this book brings together the winning entries in the twentyfirst edition of the Francisco Giner de los Ríos Awards for Improvements in Educational Quality, a scheme which, since 1983, has sought to recognize and disseminate innovative educational and pedagogical projects for secondary school children which help dynamize teaching practice in public and private centers while better aligning it with the needs of today´s society (for a description of the winning projects in the latest edition of the awards, see pages 4 and 5 of this issue).

These projects, it is hoped, will serve as an inspiration and support to all those with an interest in education, by proposingnew pedagogical avenues that are as necessary as they are timely and stimulating: among them, the horizontality of values and interdisciplinarity of contents in the European teaching space; teaching children how to develop scientific research models, so they become instigators and agents of the construction of their own knowledge; awareness of the first language and its origins as a powerful instrument to appropriate the world; or the application of information and communication technologies in interactive learning processes.