Gendered washrooms and changerooms are sites of tension for many transgender and/or gender non-conforming users. However, these are not the only groups impacted by the exclusive provision of gendered spaces. As gender-neutral facilities become increasingly standardized across multiple sectors, we consider how the rising trend of "universal…

Many educators view makerspaces as a means of increasing student engagement in K-12 classrooms. As faculty and staff of the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, we have noted low comfort levels in using and experimenting with technology. For this reason, we decided to create a place in which pre-service teachers could test and…

Climate change is one of the most significant challenges today. Throughout the world, countries are taking bold steps to create a healthier and sustainable planet. Colleges have developed and implemented broad and significant measures to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change, in everything from the development of new programs in…

This article reports on the opening up of a new, rich seam of interdisciplinary research that brings together historians of education with historians of art and architecture to examine the meaning and incidence of "The Decorated School". It examines the origins of the idea of art as educator in the nineteenth century and discusses how…

The University of British Columbia (UBC) recently celebrated the opening of its Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), a living laboratory for researchers to teach, test, and study the long-term impact of sustainable practices and technologies. Featuring advanced building controls, sensing technology, and management software…

School districts in Canada are part of a growing international movement that puts strong emphasis on school design to serve the diverse needs and learning styles of students for the 21st century economy. Diverse, purposeful spaces for individual and group activities, "schools within schools," support for cross-disciplinary collaboration…

Two recent peer-reviewed studies support the need to update the traditional school design model that has remained fundamentally unchanged for over a century. In a 2011 study published by the American Educational Research Journal, entitled "Problem-Based Learning in K-12 Education," Clarice Wirkala and Deanna Kuhn document a 200-500…

At the opening of Olds High School, Principal Tom Christensen held his breath as he watched students inspect the new facilities designed with a new approach to learning in mind. The Alberta school is divided into four so-called "quads," each housing one-quarter of the school's 800 students, with flexible learning spaces to accommodate…

Space is both an asset and a burden for colleges and universities. On the one hand, space holds enormous value for institutions; their campuses and buildings are worth, in many cases, hundreds of millions of dollars. Space is the medium in which the institution operates. Online courses have proven that education can be conducted anywhere, but most…

Hanover School Division (HSD) is located southeast of Winnipeg, Canada and is currently Manitoba's largest rural school division, with 7500 students in 18 schools. A recent wave of immigration has led to rapid growth in both numbers and diversity and the recent planning and construction of Clearspring Middle School in Steinbach is providing many…

This article features new library designs that offer flexible, people-centric, tech-driven environments that reflect the increasingly synergetic nature of today's campuses. Among these new library designs is the University of Calgary's Taylor Family Digital Library, a 265,000-square-foot building scheduled to open in fall 2010 and touted as the…

This paper presents a campus tour assignment in a first-year undergraduate environmental studies course at York University, Toronto, Canada. As a pedagogical tool, the assignment enables students to interrogate the dominant narratives of a university's immediate physical spaces and to apply broader theoretical and practical concepts to their…

Like many other jurisdictions, the western Canadian province of Alberta is seeking cost-effective and creative ways of providing school infrastructure that meets the needs of 21st century learning. Solutions are being found through the use of alternative financing and procurement arrangements and through innovative approaches to creating flexible…

The Samuel Brighouse Elementary School, located in Richmond, BC, a city adjacent to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, is a five-hundred student elementary school. When completed in September 2011, it will replace an existing older school on the same site. This project was identified early on as an opportunity for the Richmond School Board to…

Describes two recent vocational education school construction projects in Quebec: a school of forestry and wood technology, and a steelwork training center. (EV)