Universities across the globe are transforming or upgrading their campus infrastructure to prepare students for the work in the 21st century. Such campus transformations can be important in various ways. For example, universities can introduce innovative learning spaces that support recruitment and enrollment policies on campus. Even though the…

With the United States higher education sector representing over five billion square feet and expending over six billion dollars annually on energy costs, the higher education institution has an opportunity to flourish as a thought leader in integrating exemplary approaches to sustainable development throughout the campus. This manuscript puts…

Today's educational structures require teachers to move from isolation to collaboration to improve knowledge, skills, and instructional practices for effective teaching and learning. To do this, many schools across the United States have implemented professional learning communities as the framework for collaboration. The purpose of this framework…

Members of an Innovation School committee from Florida Gulf Coast University and the School District of Lee County share their individual and collective perspectives on designing anew traditional public school as an inquiry-based innovation school through an articulated partnership. Perspectives are shared through the lens of narrative inquiry and…

Purpose: This paper explores how leaders of new public high schools -- one charter and two innovation schools -- navigated the journey from school-in-theory to school-in-practice during the school's first three years. School leaders at charter and innovation schools have increased freedom over curriculum, budget, scheduling and personnel when…

For many first-generation college students, traditional academic culture and structures can create barriers to their engagement on campus and academic success. To ensure that academic libraries are not also presenting unnecessary challenges to these students, first-generation needs and expectations should be important considerations in library…

This paper identifies approaches, challenges, and best practices related to planning and designing today's academic library learning spaces. As part of the Project Information Literacy (PIL) Practitioner Series, qualitative data is presented from 49 interviews conducted with a sample of academic librarians, architects, and library consultants.…

This paper focuses on the academic involvement in the design and delivery of new teaching and learning spaces in higher education. The findings are based on research conducted at 12 universities within the United Kingdom. The paper examines the nature of academic involvement in the design and decision-making process of pedagogic space design,…

This paper reviews and synthesizes urban science education studies published between 2000 and 2013 with a view to identifying current challenges faced by both teachers and students in urban classrooms. Additionally, this paper considers the historical events that have shaped the conditions, bureaucracies, and interactions of urban institutions.…

College students with disabilities face various barriers to academic and social engagement. The present project was conducted based on principles of participatory action research (PAR) using Photovoice method with six students, gathering images representing such barriers, and developing narratives to describe the problems as well as possible ways…

The design and implementation of technology can prove a particularly daunting challenge for campus planners and project designers. Specialization is required for the selection and implementation of technologies including the familiar network, telecommunications, and data-processing functions, and also the more esoteric emerging technology labs and…

The experiences and needs of college students who identify on the transgender spectrum (androgynous, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, transfeminine, transmaculine, transgender, etc.) have begun to be explored in recent years, but this work has largely been limited to four-year colleges and universities. Virtually no research has considered the…

This article explores how to adopt a gender perspective in the analysis of educational facilities. It argues that social relations are influenced by the physical environment, and that social and physical aspects are often interlinked. Although difficult to measure, including a gender perspective in international research and other projects on…

The Yakutia Republic is currently working to update its early childhood development (ECD) system. Its goal is to ensure a high quality environment for early learning and child care and to enable higher enrolment levels. Currently, a high priority for the Government of Yakutia is to increase access to pre-school education, given the significant…

Some in the green building industry have spoken for some time now of green buildings not needing to cost more. Jason McLennan in his 2004 book "The Philosophy of Sustainable Design" discusses not falling into the "green is always more" syndrome. He goes on to explain the concept of tunneling through the cost barrier. A 2007…