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David Medd, principal architect for the DES, reflects on the design developments demanded by new educational practice.

This article explores the little understood practice of school interior design and the manner in which school interiors give form to ideas about what the work of children and teachers could and should look like. Its focus is a perceived link between the concepts of school work made material in the design of new twenty‐first century learning environments and those expressed in the design of Modernist progressive schools such as Richard Neutra’s Corona Ave, Elementary School, California. The article’s impetus comes from current interest in the inter‐relationship between the design of physical learning environments and pedagogy reform as governments in Australia and internationally, work to transform teaching and learning practices through innovative school building and refurbishment projects. Government campaigns, for example the UK’s Schools for the Future Program and Australia’s Victorian Schools Plan, use a promotional rhetoric that calls for the final dismantling of the cellular classroom with its industrial model of work so that ‘different pedagogical approaches and the different ways that children learn [can] be represented in the design of new learning environments’, in buildings and interiors designed to support contemporary constructivist‐inspired pedagogies.

Furniture is as important as buildings in aiding and influencing new educational ideas. Both design and the methods of economic requisition are priorities which concern all local education authorities. Some have tackled this individually some have organised themselves into consortia and behind them all is the Department of Education and Science.

This article puts a fresh light on Jackson’s elementary curriculum in Western Australia which was a unique blend of the ‘new education’, designed to complement the Western Australia government’s economic development policies. In this respect, he followed the work of Rooper, who brought an agricultural emphasis to rural elementary education in England. In Western Australia, Jackson not only promoted the established practical forms of the ‘new education’ but, swayed by political leaders, encouraged a rural focus on the elementary government school curriculum, both for educational as well as utilitarian purposes, thereby serving the needs of the individual as well as the colonial economy.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.

Recently, the focus of UK and European flood risk management policy has been towards promoting the uptake of property level flood adaptation measures. Despite this focus, the take‐up of property level flood adaptation measures (both resilient and resistant) remains very low. One of the apparent barriers to uptake is the cost of installing such measures. This study aims to investigate the cost of adopting resilient reinstatement measures by considering a small number of actual properties that were flooded in Cockermouth during 2009.

Secondary data obtained from a loss adjusting company provides the basis for analysis. The data take into consideration the cost benefit of resilient repair, assuming the same properties were flooded again. The traditional reinstatement costs were established as the actual cost of putting the properties back in a like‐for‐like manner while resilient reinstatement costs were established by creating new resilient repair schedules based on recommended good practice.

The results of the study show that the percentage extra cost for resilient reinstatement over traditional repair cost ranged from 23 to 58 per cent with a mean of 34 per cent depending on the house type. However, while resilient repairs were found to be more expensive than traditional (i.e. like‐for‐like) methods, they were found to significantly reduce the repair costs assuming a subsequent flood were to take place. Resilient flood mitigation measures seem most promising and, given repeat flooding, will help in limiting the cost of repairs up to as much as 73 per cent for properties with a 20 per cent annual chance of flooding, which indicates that the up‐front investment would be recovered following a single subsequent flood event.

The uptake of resilient reinstatement among the floodplain property owners in the UK is very low and one of the reasons for the low uptake is lack of understanding of the cost and benefit of adopting such measures. While there have been previous studies towards investigating the costs of resilient reinstatement, it is believed that this is the first to use real claims data and information to analyse the tangible costs/benefits of resilient reinstatement.

The purpose of this study is to understand the potential of serious gaming as an imaginative and creative method to collect data in disaster studies that address key concerns such as extractive research, power inequalities, and bridging the theory-practice gap in exploring post-disaster recovery.

Novel serious gaming approach deployed to connect theory-practice by identifying and co-analysing post-disaster recovery gaps in a workshop setting.

The serious game has value in bridging theory-practice divides, identifying and exploring gaps/solutions in post-flood recovery, and serving as a novel social science research approach for disaster studies.

Outlining a dialogic approach to knowledge construction between academics, practitioners, policymakers and community voices on post-disaster recovery.

Fostering collaboration and knowledge construction on post-disaster recovery gaps across stakeholders is valuable in improving disaster resilience strategies that benefit communities affected by disasters.

The paper proposes a creative and co-developed serious game method of data collection for disaster studies.

The purpose of this study is to clarify changes in people-place interrelationship and hidden layers of survivors psychological challenges in the reconstructed housing environment, the 2003 Bam and 2017 Ezgeleh-Sarpol Zahab earthquakes occurred in Iran, because perception of earthquake risk in residential dwellings and traumatic experiences during and after its occurrence are among stressful events making communities face with various spectrum of emotional and cognitive consequences. Such events shape memory “traumascapes” and cause changes in mental schemas and as a result, altering decisions and behavioral responses in long-term familiar environments. Because, in the disaster-affected communities, psychological recovery will be greatly influenced by residential experiences.

The current research was performed with a qualitative and multicase study design, and data were collected using deep and semistructured private interviews and discussions in focus groups with participation of 33 people by narrative technique.

According to findings, people are facing enduring cognitive disruptions regarding home concept and its location as a safe and secure paradigm. Findings showed that there are a considerable amount of behavioral responses and emotional consequences in the form of protective behaviors, severe sensitivity to environmental stimuli, fears, phobias in residential dwellings and disturbances in place attachments.

It is noteworthy that despite all time and place differences, the two studied communities had significant similarities in earthquake traumatic experiences and perceptions and also resulting conscious and subconscious responses.