The response to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted educational systems throughout the world. School closures, virtual schooling, and strict safety protocols for in-person learning changed instructional approaches to teaching. These changes were particularly disruptive in early childhood education which relies on play-based learning to support…

This paper implements a feminist new material lens to illuminate how the spaces and objects of play are actively involved in the enactment and normalisation of gender violence in kindergarten. Findings from data collected in two Canadian kindergartens show how the familiar and mundane spatial-material arrangements of play, namely the use of…

Recent years have witnessed the spread of purpose-built active learning classrooms throughout the higher education sector. While these innovative learning spaces are well-suited for a variety of active learning strategies, their lack of a single focal point means they are inconvenient spaces for lecturing. While educational developers often…

Background: Religious institutions play a crucial role in health promotion and hold significant influence in the public health field. Aim: The aim of this review is to examine outcomes of health-promoting interventions involving the use of mosques as the intervention venue, its role in promoting health behavior change, and the role of theory in…

Until recently, built environments have been designed exclusively to meet the needs of neurotypical populations; however, there is increasing recognition of the need to make built environments more accommodating for neurodiverse populations, including autistic individuals. This scoping review aims to comprehensively explore and synthesise this…

COVID-19 has had an extreme effect on older people. Now more than ever we need collaborative approaches to address complex issues within research on aging. However, the pandemic has dramatically changed the way we conduct, interact, and organize research within interdisciplinary groups. This paper describes a case study of how an interdisciplinary…

Convention refugees are individuals who have fled their home countries due to a substantiated fear of persecution. As a consequence, many young Convention refugees are disconnected from their environment as they enter schools and communities and are often misunderstood in their new country due to cultural barriers. Given the universality of human…

Schools are often sites of surveillance for students as behaviors are governed and regulated by gendered norms and sexed expectations. For transgender and gender non-conforming students, school environments can produce anxiety as students are categorized into gender binaries. This article draws from Canadian policy in public schools and higher…

The COVID-19 pandemic posed, and continues to pose, many challenges to teaching and learning, most notably the need to pivot from traditional in-person course instruction and experiences to entirely virtual course delivery while maintaining course rigor and quality. Our guiding principle for course modification was the critical need for an…

This study examines how students are using academic library spaces and the role these spaces are playing in the campus community. Data were collected on five campuses (two community colleges, two undergraduate universities, and one technical institute) via observational seating sweeps and questionnaires. The study found remarkably similar usage…

In western democracies like Canada, children develop understandings of themselves by participating in physical, social, and civic activities. Such activities occur in the built environments within which they live, learn, and play. Children with motor impairments are only able to engage in these activities in environments that are accessible. These…

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended life for students, teachers and everyone connected to public schools. The crisis has also exposed the fragilities of the economy in meeting the basic needs of all and highlighted the importance of the public sector, of community, and of care work. Schools are key public spaces of community and care. They must be…

At a time of substantial change, globalization, and ubiquitous access to information, educators struggle to change even the most basic aspects of their classrooms. This is especially true for those in challenging contexts where many perpetuate the "mind numbing" practice of rote instruction. This paper describes a collaborative…

In our day, leaders involved in ingenious sustainable development projects plan spaces and implement practices that are beneficial to the environment. These initiatives represent a fertile source of information on the competences linked to environmental design that we should nurture in our students. In view of improving our understanding of the…

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…