Is future teachers' contact with the physical environment significant enough for them to choose to educate their students about sustainability? These digital natives stand out from previous generations by their way of living. The research based on grounded theory was aimed at understanding future teachers' relationships with physical and…

Studies showed that two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) educational content contributes to learning. Although there were many studies with 3D stereoscopic learning environments, only a few studies reported on the differences between real, 2D, and 3D scenes, as far as cognitive load and attentional demands were concerned. We used…

This Statistics in Brief summarizes the changes from the 1998-99 to the 2012-13 school years in the average age of public schools, ratings of satisfaction of the environmental quality of school facilities, the cost to put school buildings in good overall condition, and short-range plans to improve school facilities. In addition to providing…

This article sets out to explore how and whether the physical, social and conceived conditions in schools facilitate or disrupt support work aimed at improving student learning and preventing social exclusion. This is accomplished by comparing student support practices in the common areas of two newly renovated secondary schools built in two…

This current study explores the function of physical space as a metaphor for freedom and sexual expression in Benito Pérez Galdós's novel Tristana (1892) and Luis Buñuel's loose filmic adaptation (1970). The female walk, a foundational activity in the formative process of the subject, will serve Tristana as a path towards emancipation and freedom,…

This study was designed to understand how a school can transform its instructional practices and collaborative structures to bring about rigorous, relevant, and engaging learning for all students. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to determine how a school can create a culture of innovation in teaching practices. This case study…

On the summer solstice of June 2010, a time of constant Arctic light, 14 conference delegates gathered in Yellowknife to fly further north past the tree line, and to a lake downstream of the frozen headwaters of the Mara River. The romance and reality of the conference group in that place--the caribou, muskox, bear and wolf encounters, their…

Background: Studio-based courses - the primary approach in design education--have been viewed as effective environments for learning. However, few studies have utilized an ecological lens to explore how the studio environment creates opportunities for social interaction through immersive studies of studio learning. Purpose: We engaged in an…

The "Teaching Green School Building" is an emergent type of school building that attempts to engage building users with environmental issues in buildings. Architectural interventions in these buildings range from signage to interactive touch screens to gardens and demonstration kitchens that foster educational programmes about…

This article critically reviews the methodologies and methods that have been used for the evaluation of physical learning environments. To contextualize discussion about the evaluation of learning spaces, we initially chart the development of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) for non-domestic buildings. We then discuss the recent evolution of POE…

This study addresses the need to better understand how providers' perceptions of indoor and outdoor childcare settings can set the stage for arranging play spaces to optimise children's moderate-to-vigorous physical play. Childcare providers' perceptions of the level of physical activity, safety, and quality that children experience…

This paper describes a study of sixth grade children's conceptions of nature and the environment. In so doing, it asks that environmental educators pay more attention to children's preconceived notions of environment and nature. Should this occur the theory-practice gap in environmental education may be diminished. Learners' concept…

This article focuses on how the representational properties of manipulatives affect the strategies children employ in problem solving. Two studies examined the effect of physical materials on 4-7-year-old children's problem solving strategies in a numerical (i.e., additive composition) task. The first study showed how children not only identified…

Within low-income communities in low- and high-resource countries, there is a profound need for more effective schools that are better able to foster child and youth development and support student learning. This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the role of teacher ecology in influencing teacher effectiveness and, through…

Social work's traditional emphasis on the individual in the context of social environments has resulted in a neglect of the person in the context of physical environments. This conceptual article addresses this oversight by presenting three subconcepts of place--place attachment, place identity, and territoriality--and draws on research examples…