This book explores ‘environmental forms’ in terms of their relationships to the socio-politico-ecological transformations currently in progress. Today, the environment is a central theme in political discourse, scientific work and everyday life. It is multi-dimensional: it is a living space, a socio-ecological system and a field of research and action. However, despite the presence and diversity of existing approaches, the ways in which policies address environmental issues remain mainly focused on control, highlighting the techno-ecological, managerial and curative dimensions of public actions. Although public action tends to instrumentalise the environment, the humanities and social sciences have initiated significant reflections in this field, proposing alternative ways of thinking about the environment in its multiple aspects and scales. As part of ‘another approach’ to the environment that mirrors contemporary developments, this book adopts a form-based approach which has been largely neglected by previous studies dealing with environmental themes. The analyses provided here will open up a new perspective on the relationships between people, aesthetics and environments, and are drawn from different schools of research, highlighting the huge potential of reading the environment through forms or, conversely, a reading of environmental forms.

This book argues narrative, people and place are inseparable and pursues the consequences of this insight through the design of narrative environments. This is a new and distinct area of practice that weaves together and extends narrative theory, spatial theory and design theory. Examples of narrative spaces, such as exhibitions, brand experiences, urban design and socially engaged participatory interventions in the public realm, are explored to show how space acts as a medium of communication through a synthesis of materials, structures and technologies, and how particular social behaviours are reproduced or critiqued through spatial narratives. This book will be of interest to scholars in design studies, urban studies, architecture, new materialism and design practitioners in the creative industries.

Recent scholarship on children’s literature displays a wide variety of interests in classic and contemporary children’s books. While environmental and ecological concerns have led to an interest in ‘ecocriticism’, as yet there is little on the significance of the ecological imagination and experience to both the authors and readers – young and old – of these texts. This edited collection brings together a set of original international research-based chapters to explore the role of children’s literature in learning about environments and places, with a focus on how children’s literature may inform and enrich our imagination, experiences and responses to environmental challenges and injustice. Contributions from Australia, Canada, USA and UK explore the diverse ways in which children’s literature can provide what are arguably some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children might have with ‘nature’. Chapters examine classic and new storybooks, mythic tales, and image-based and/or written texts read at home, in school and in the field. Contributors focus on exploring how children’s literature mediates and informs our imagination and understandings of diverse environments and places, and how it might open our eyes and lives to other presences, understandings and priorities through stories, their telling and re-telling, and their analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2020, held as part of the 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2020, in Copenhagen, Denmark, in July 2020. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From a total of 6326 submissions, a total of 1439 papers and 238 posters has been accepted for publication in the HCII 2020 proceedings. The 50 papers included in this volume were organized in topical sections on interactions in intelligent and IoT environments, usability aspects of handheld and mobile devices, designing games and immersive experiences, and UX studies in automotive and transport.

Learning environments continue to change considerably and is no longer confined to the face-to-face classroom setting. As learning options have evolved, educators must adopt a variety of pedagogical strategies and innovative technologies to enable learning. Practical Applications and Experiences in K-20 Blended Learning Environments compiles pedagogical strategies and technologies and their outcomes that have been successfully applied in blended instruction. Highlighting best practices as elementary, secondary, and tertiary educational levels; this book is a vital tool for educators who teach or plan to teach in blended learning environments and for researchers interested in the area of blended education knowledge.

Environmental Experience and Plasticity of the Developing Brain goes beyond the genetic basis of neurodevelopment. Chapters illuminate the external factors that can dramatically impact the brain early in life and, consequently, the eventual accomplishment of developmental milestones and the construction of adult behavior and personality. Authored and edited by leaders in this rapidly growing field, Environmental Experience and Plasticity of the Developing Brain not only surveys preexisting literature on the effects of environment versus genetics, but also discusses more recent studies on the impacts of neurodevelopment in terms of maternal stimulation, environmental enrichment and sensory deprivation. The book also includes key examples of environmental impacts on preexisting genetic syndromes leading to developmental disabilities. Focus is also given to the consequences of early adverse experience in primates, as well as neurobiological and behavioral consequences in institutionalized human children and the reversibility of such consequences. Environmental Experience and Plasticity of the Developing Brain encompasses a broad area of research in the field of developmental neurobiology and offers a unique combination of different examples of environmental factors affecting brain development and behavior.

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.

The purpose of this volume is to explore theory, problem formulation, and methodology in "experiencing the environment. " In this embryonic field, the writings of a number of individuals already stand out as representative of dis tinctive viewpoints. In order to facilitate further development of the field, a conference! was proposed to gather in one place representatives of a number of major viewpoints with regard to the embryonic field of "environmental psychology. " It was hoped that a colloquy among such representatives would facilitate a clarification of the similarities and differences between the various perspectives, and might enable proponents of any given point of view to benefit from the insights of others with different orientations. Hopefully, it might also promote a greater articulation for this emerging field of inquiry. With these ends in mind, the sponsors of the conference asked the various prospective participants to present their theoretical positions and representative research illustrative of those positions. Some of the perspectives represented at the conference emphasized the point that the construal of phenomena depends heavily on the values and needs of perceivers. Implicit in this kind of position is the thesis that anyone who seeks to describe a complex happening is likely to shape it in terms of presup positions, biases, etc. , that may not be shared by others.

This three volume set LNCS 12779, 12780, and 12781 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2021, held as part of the 23rd International Conference, HCI International 2021, which took place in July 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The total of 1276 papers and 241 posters included in the 39 HCII 2021 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 5222 submissions. The papers of DUXU 2021, Part III are organized in topical sections named: Mobile UX Research and Design; DUXU for Extended Reality; DUXU for the Creative Industries; Usability and UX Studies.