In December 2005, the United Kingdom launched a process for evaluating the design quality of primary and secondary school buildings. The Design Quality Indicator (DQI) for Schools is a tool that can assist stakeholders--teachers, parents, school governors, students, community members, local authority clients and building professionals--to achieve…

It is a fact that architectural design education has become the focus of an extremely complicated set of issues and conscientious debates. Therefore, to extend and challenge educational understanding in architecture it becomes crucial to exchange pedagogical practices. In this article, a specific theoretical approach and teaching methodology,…

Education institutions have trouble justifying huge spaces that have only one function and sit empty most of the day. The solution to this problem is to create multipurpose spaces that can accommodate a number of functions. This article offers suggestions on how to develop functional multipurpose spaces.

Everybody knows that healthy school buildings contribute to student learning, reduce health and operating costs, and ultimately, increase school quality and competitiveness. However, 55 million of the nation's children attend public and private K-12 schools where poor air quality, hazardous chemicals and other unhealthy conditions make students…

In November 1996, the voters of Montgomery County (Maryland) approved by referendum an amendment to the County Charter that changed the County Council's review and approval cycle of the six-year Capital Improvements Program (CIP) from an annual to biennial cycle. The referendum specified that in odd-numbered fiscal years (on-years) the County…

Secondary vocational-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…

The third annual conference of the National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) was held at Trinity College Dublin on 11-12 November 2009, and was attended by over 300 delegates. The theme--"Research-Teaching Linkages: Practice and Policy"--was timely and generated some fascinating papers, workshops and…

Teacher shortages are essentially a problem of distribution (Darling-Hammond, 2001; Ingersoll, 2001; National Association of State Boards of Education, 1998; Olson, 2000; Reeves, 2003; Voke, 2002). According to recent studies, hardest to find are teachers who are both qualified and willing to teach in hard-to-staff schools, which included those in…

As viewed from two sides such as teacher and student, in this article, we explore the human-based teaching reform for the college professional course of materials Science and Engineering, point out the qualities and conditions that professional teacher should possess in the process of human-based teaching reform of professional course and the…

Two years into an aggressive expansion plan, Aspire Public Schools was on track in terms of school openings, but behind on its goals to add a layer of management. The schools were performing well, but the nonprofit's leaders were stretched paper thin and concerned about the organization's ability to perform in the face of more growth. Determined…

Social geography brings a new perspective to understanding longstanding separation between general and special education in higher education. This paper uses methods from social geography to consider how the structures and processes of space function to maintain longstanding divisions between general and special education in a US teacher education…

What ought authorizers do to ensure that the charter schools they approve provide a quality education to students with disabilities who enroll in their school? That is the question many authorizers wrestle with as they strive to strike a balance between fulfilling their responsibilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)…

This paper presents an edited transcript from a round-table discussion in Boston between a group of architects and campus-sustainability directors. They met together with The Chronicle to talk about the issues on climate change, poverty, energy use, environmental health, and the role that colleges, and particularly their facilities offices, can…

Purpose: The aim of this work is to examine the relationship between aspects of objective and perceived housing and aspects of healthy aging, defined as independence in daily activities and subjective well-being. Furthermore, this research examined the comparability of relationships between housing and healthy aging in the five European countries.…

The Plowden Report encouraged the design of more compact and flexible school buildings to accommodate its vision of child-centred teaching. These schools came to be known as "open plan". By the late 1970s about 10% of schools were of open-plan design but researchers found serious weaknesses in the quality of their work. Plowden's ideals…