This article explores the pedagogical potential of closely reading and writing hardboiled detective fiction in a Canadian secondary English Language Arts classroom. Grounded in narrative theory and co-taught with a local high-school teacher, the unit focused on the cynical narration and stylistic elements of authors like Raymond Chandler and…

A growing number of colleges and universities have come to recognize the role and responsibilities they have in the economic and social fabric of their surrounding communities and regions as anchor institutions. Yet, the conditions of urban communities surrounding even the most engaged universities--including under-resourced public schools,…

Anchor movements rest on the premise that people- and place-based initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The community development movement, however, has been haunted for years by the people-place dilemma -- the idea that efforts to help people harm efforts to uplift places and vice versa. Most of the literature on the anchor strategy has…

Can verse mediate between the educational institution and the wider community of which it is a part? Utilising a case study of a specific taught module, this essay considers whether the performance of poetry as an experiential learning activity has a role to play in the emerging concept of the university as an anchor institution, a term that…

The Stitching Urban Vision (SUV)1 method is innovative, facilitating children to co-create a sense of empowerment. SUV© fosters an understanding of negotiation using a shared vision. SUV© sits apart from traditional negotiating methods that often result in delayed, unresolved, and fragmented ideas. Adults often resist reaching collective decisions…

The aim of this study was to explore whether Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE) improve the creativity of users regardless of their creative potential profile. The study involved brainstorming sessions in two settings: a real meeting room (RE) and a similar meeting room in a virtual environment (VE). Twenty groups of three users of public…

The use of "participatory research" and "participation" to promote the empowerment of the poor and marginalised began in the 1970s and gained momentum in the early 1980s. The approach builds on the "learning for change" paradigm in which everyday experience is the basis for developing agency, and committing to and…

Coaches often enter their profession in hopes of helping others and making the world a better place in which to live. In this narrative, the Author recounts a volleyball recruiting trip to Denver, Colorado. He stays in an area of the city plagued by homelessness and crime. What he saw and experienced made him question the real impact he has on…

Shifting from a traditional lecture-based teaching approach to a student-centred approach, such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL), demands significant changes in Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). It requires changes for teachers, students, institutional management, and even the physical learning environment. Once a university is not designed…

Young people's engagement with urban public space has been facing a number of obstacles that reflect a lack of understanding of their needs, values and priorities. The emergence of digital devices and social media as integral elements of youth culture adds further urgency to the need to understand how young people themselves visually articulate…

Congestion is a persistent and expensive problem, costing the nation collectively over $300 billion each year. Cities have generally attempted to address congestion using an unoriginal set of expensive strategies, like building new roads or expanding public transit, and many cities are considering implementing congestion pricing. Expanding school…

Drawing on our experience teaching a 2-week field-based geography course on urban environmental issues, we reinforce the value of field-based experiential education (EE) especially as it faces growing threats. We show how such experience can enable students to understand the diversity of urban environmental challenges in situ; grasp cities as…

This study utilized qualitative methods and the urban political ecology (UPE) framework to situate changes in scope and content of undergraduate geography curriculum in Nigeria within the domain of education for sustainability. It was stimulated by significant curriculum-related events in the geography department of the University of Nigeria, and…

Safety is one of the primary reasons why parents report seeking out a school of choice in depressed cities with a high proportion of charter schools. However, little empirical research has examined how parents assess school safety in these settings. This study explores factors that parents associate with school safety in Detroit, Michigan by…

Mixed methods research (MMR) is useful for addressing complex and multidisciplinary urban problems. This article demonstrates an integrated MMR approach with a novel two-phase exploratory sequential design while studying play, play space, and children's (age 7-15 years) location preference for play in three residential areas in Dhaka. We used…