Davidson
Elementary School
Davidson, NC
Adams Group, Inc. & Henry Sanoff
Honor Award

Program
POE
Site & Floor Plan
Photos
Home

Grades K - 5
700 students
82,000 SF
$6,500,000
Completion: 1997

Post Occupancy Evaluation

Evaluation 2:

THESIS

(Excepts From) The Inclusion of Permanent Student Artwork in Public Schools and its Relation to Sense of Ownership

Jennifer Platten Killeen 2000 (Cornell University)

Note: The following thesis is a comparison between two schools. One school is referred to as the “control school”, the other facility is referred to as “the experimental school”. The experimental school is Davidson Elementary. The experimental school was designed as a community center. The architect intentionally designed gallery areas and wide corridors for the purpose of displaying art.

The objective of this study is to determine if the physical design of the learning environment can afford opportunities for enhancing student’s sense of ownership in learning. This research hypothesizes that the inclusion of permanent student artwork in the interior spaces of school buildings increases student ownership of the learning process.

Design

In the design of this research, the independent variable is permanently displayed student artwork as a function of school design. Specifically, the physical design of the learning environment has been operationalized as the creation and inclusion of student artwork permanently displayed within the school. In the experimental school, all of the permanent student artworks are ceramic tile displays that were installed atop the block walls of the schools’ hallways. These installations are of large proportions (nothing under ten feet of hallway area), and are placed throughout the entire school building. The experimental school included five ceramic tile installations created by the students of the school. The experimental school is part of a large school district where all schools being renovated or built receive the same architectural program. This program document contains the same design guidelines for all school design within the district. The experimental and control schools are built structurally equivalent (the same number and size of classrooms, hallways, support spaces, etc.). The dependent variable is a measurement of sense of ownership. This variable is measured by a questionnaire that each student participating in the study completed. It contains thirty-three questions concerning sense of ownership.

The Schools

Both the experimental school and the control school are located in the same school district. The experimental school was chosen due to the extensive amount of permanent student artwork displayed through their school. The control school was selected to match both the demographic profile and the geographic location of the experimental school. The control school selected is located approximately twenty miles south of the experimental school. The school district has a busing integration system whereby students from the inner city are bused to the outlying areas and vise versa. The ratios of bused in students are equivalent in both schools. This is important, as the racial make-up of each school is comparable.

As well, the Office of Instructional Accountability in the county considers the SES comparable between the two schools. Both schools have the same state-mandated curriculum and are non-classified schools (i.e. neither of the chosen schools are part of the magnet program).

Teaching philosophy may be a potential confounding variable. To control for this, two scales from Rudolph Moos and Edison Trickett’s 1973 Classroom Environment Scale were utilized to measure teacher involvement and control in the classroom (Moos & Trickett, 19973). The Classroom Environment Scale identified the aspects of the psychosocial environment of classrooms that were most salient to students and teachers. An example question from the Involvement scale is, “Very few students take part in class discussions or activities”. An example question from the Teacher Control scale is, “There are very few rules to follow”.

The Subjects

The subjects include three hundred and seventy-seven fourth and fifth grade students attending a public elementary school within this school district. The average age of these students is 10 to 11 years of age. This age group was selected in order to reduce the amount of testing time, students of this age range are able to read and respond to a questionnaire at a faster rate than those of younger grade levels.

At the experimental school the gender profile consists of 51% male and 49% female. The control school’s gender profile is 52% male and 48% female. These are “naïve subjects” with no prior history of participating in relevant experiments.

The student population size is comparable, approximately 200 students in the 4^th and 5^th grades, and they have a similar demographic population. Responses include 217 students at the experimental school. This school has a population of 11% African-American, 86% white, and 3% other. The response rate of the control school includes 160 students with a demographic profile of 19% African-American, 77% white, and 4% other.

To control for the potential of confounding variables, parents of those students who participated in the study are asked demographic information including self-selection of school, educational attainment, and range of income.

At the experimental school, all students (K-5) are continuously involved in the process of both designing and creating artwork for their school. The student artwork is not “selected” per se, but emanates from class projects. These projects are incorporated into the curriculum of all grade levels. The artwork reflects a particular aspect of lesson being learned. For example, in the Welcome Sign located near the Main office, the kindergartners made tile leaves as they learned about nature and the changing of seasons; the clouds are made by the third graders who were studying the earth and its atmosphere in Science class; and the fourth graders designed Victorian homes as part of their curriculum lesson on the Victorian era and its architectural influence in their community. Each tile created is personalized with the name and age of each student who made it. The present fifth graders at the school were kindergartners when the new school opened. These students were involved in the creation of some of the artwork originally displayed in the new school.

Although attempts are made to represent every student’s artwork within the permanent display at the experimental school, it is likely that variability in individual involvement has occurred. Therefore, students are also asked to assess both how much of their artwork is on permanent display and how strongly they feel their own work could be displayed at their school in the future.

In the control school, these students have been exposed to the inclusion of more typical temporary student artwork on bulletin boards and walls. There are no permanent installations of student artwork in the control school.

Results

Sense of Ownership

In the first step of analysis, a t-test comparing sense of ownership between the two schools was run. There is a significant effect on the design of the learning environment on sense of ownership. The experimental school has a mean of 1.76 and a standard deviation of .29, and the control school has a mean of 2.10 and a standard deviation of .30, t(351) = -10.52, p <.000. In this analysis, a score of 1 indicates a strong sense of ownership and a score of 3 a weak sense of ownership.

The experimental school and control schools were also compared for sense of satisfaction as indicated by their students. This score was calculated from one question that asked students to rank their Sense of Satisfaction with their school. T-tests were run. The experimental school had a mean score of 52.88 and standard deviation of 31.42, t(350)=9.53, p<.000. A score of 100 is indicative of a strong sense of satisfaction, and a score a 0 indicates no satisfaction.

After the initial analysis, two correlations were calculated in the experimental school to test the hypothesized relation of measured sense of ownership and degree of student work on display, and the relation of measured sense of ownership and the student’s perception of how much work may be on display in the future in the experimental school. The relation between measured sense of ownership and amount of permanently installed artwork was found to be significant (r = .44, p < .05). Those students who have work on display at the present time have a stronger sense of ownership.

The relation between measured sense of ownership and the student’s perception of how much artwork may be permanently installed in the future was also found to be significant (r = .42, p < .05). Students in the experimental school who perceived that they had the potential to have their artwork permanently displayed, also scored higher on the scale of sense of ownership.

To compare the relation between those students who were kindergartens at the new school and involved in the initial creation of permanent student artwork, and those students who entered the school after this time, an ANOVA was run to compare these students. Sense of ownership, as can be seen in table 3.1 and 3.2, does not vary as a function of the grade by school interaction F (1, 347 < 1.0) between those students who were part of the original process, and those that were not. The affect of grade is the same, no matter when the students attended school. As well, the most significant variable continues to be the school, F (1, 347) = 110.27, p < .00.

Table 3.1 Mean Ownership by Grade & School
Grade	School	Mean of Ownership
4^th	Experimental Control	1.76 2.12
5^th	Experimental Control	1.76 2.07
Total	Experimental Control	1.77 2.10

Table 3.1 Mean Ownership by Grade & School

Ownership

Sum of

Squares

Mean

Square

Sig.

Main Effects Grade

School

1704E-02

9.42

1.70E-02

9.42

.19

110.3

.66

.00

2-Way Interactions

Grade * School

5.179E-02

5.17E-02

.60

.44

Model

9.60

3.20

37.45

.00

Residual

29.65

347

8.547E-02

To control for the possible effects of teacher philosophy upon the experimental school, two tests devised by Rudolf Moos were utilized to generate scores for all teachers. The two tests included teacher control and innovation in the classroom. T-tests comparing teacher control in the classroom and the amount of innovation in the classroom were run. In terms of teacher control, the experimental school has a mean of 16.54 and a standard deviation of .81, and the control school has a mean of 16.91 and a standard deviation of 1.69, t(338) = -2.73, p < .007. In terms of the amount of innovation in the classroom, the experimental school has mean of 14.78 and a standard deviation of .70, t(338) = -23.64, p < .000. The data indicate that there is a difference between the two schools and the teacher’s use of control and innovation in the classroom. However, when the variables of teacher control and the amount of innovation are statistically controlled for, the difference between the schools sense of ownership remains highly significant, as shown in table 3.3 and 3.4 respectively.

Table 3.3 Change Statistics – Teacher Control
Model	Variables Entered	R. Square	R Square Change	df1	df2	Sig. F for R Square Change
1	Teacher Control	.041	14.329	1	338	.000
2	School	.249	117.958	1	337	.000

Table 3.4. Change Statistics – Amount of Innovation
Model	Variables Entered	R. Square	R Square Change	df1	df2	Sig. F for R Square Change
1	Amount of Innovation	.167	67.866	1	338	.000
2	School	.106	49.322	1	337	.000

In order to verify the matching criterion between the two schools, data was collected on a random subset of 100 families. These data, as shown in Table 3.5, indicate the matching was successful.

Table 3.5 Descriptive Statistics
	N	Min.	Max.	Mean	Std. Dev.	N	Min.	Max.	Mean	Std. Dev.
Father Education	49	2.0	5.0	4.0	1.02	5	1.0	5.0	3.2	1.20
Mother Education	50	2.0	5.0	3.92	1.06	50	1.0	5.0	3.3	1.04
Income	50	1.0	7.0	6.38	1.66	49	1.0	7.0	5.80	1.80

Furthermore as one would expect, when these variables were included in the analysis of sense of ownership, the difference between the two schools remains highly significant, as seen in Table 3.6.

Table 3.6. – Change Statistics
Model	Variables Entered	R Square	R Square Change	F Change in R Square	Df1	Df2	Sig. F for R-Square Change
	Mother Education, Father Education, Income	.020	.020	.651	3	95	.584
	School	.291	.271	35.895	1	94	.000

Significance

A school that has incorporated permanent student artworks into the interior spaces of the school building will increase student ownership of the learning process. Sense of ownership is hypothesized to play an important role in terms of learning engagement and ultimately may even affect student achievement. The findings of this study support the original hypothesis. When the experimental school, whose walls are covered in permanent student artwork, was compared with a control school, with only temporary artwork on traditional bulletin boards, both students’ sense of ownership and sense of satisfaction were significantly stronger. These results were supported by statistical comparisons (t-tests) between the two schools. It is important to note that these relations hold independently of household income (table 3.6) as well as teacher philosophy (table 3.3 and 3.4). Furthermore, the students in the experimental school who have artwork on display and students who perceive that they will have artwork on display in the future demonstrate a stronger sense of ownership.

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