Chapter 2: Factors Influencing Elementary Education Systems in Selected European Countries

Education is a sociocultural process whose form depends on a number of aspects. Průcha (2005), for example, says that the educational process is immediately influenced by entry determinants, which are the characteristics of individual elements within the educational process: characteristics of pupils, teachers, schools, educational documents, and instruments (cf. Fraser, Walberg, Welch, & Hattie, 1987). According to Průcha (2005), these elements of the educational process appear in the educational environment (place) where education occurs, and also include the internal psychosocial environment of the participants. From an even broader perspective, the process of education takes place in interactive space-time, created by the geographic, social, economic, and political environment. However, there is the question of whether space can be considered directly as one of the entry determinants, rather than the milieu in which a process takes place. In fact, the characteristics of a space considerably influence the nature of education, its forms, and, above all, its spatial distribution and external relations within an educational system. For example, the fact that a school is located in rural space has an influence on its form: its size, teaching, and pedagogical-didactic organization and general culture (Bell & Sigsworth, 1987; Cuervo, 2016).