Executive Summary
Prepared by Bruce Jilk
This conference included four seminar tracks:

• Brain-based Learning: Discovery and Applications;
• Changes in Work, Family and Community: Their Impact on Learning Environments;
• Life-long Learning: Engaging the Whole Community in the Learning Process; and
• International Education: A Global Perspective on Learning and Facility Planning.

1. Brain-based Learning: Discovery and Applications

The first two sessions covered principles of learning as suggested by brain research. Featured speakers included Karen Holicky-Michaels, L.J. Correll Menzel, and Cheri Lunders. At the third session, led by Dr. Burton Cohen and Peter Hilts, participants discussed the implications of these principles for school design.

These research findings suggest the following principles of brain-based learning. Each brain is unique. High stress or threat can impair learning and can even kill brain cells. Emotions impact attention, health, learning, interpretation of meaning, and memory. A multitude of memory and neural pathways store and retrieve information. The body impacts learning through movement, food, cycles of attention, drugs, and other chemicals. Changes in the brain involve its entire complex and adaptive system. Building intelligence involves finding and building patterns and programs. The brain values meaning over information. Rich, non-conscious learning accepts peripheral influences and processes parts and wholes simultaneously. Brains develop better when people work together, in a society that values intelligence. Brains follow stages of readiness as they develop. With complex, sensory stimulation and complex challenges that offer feedback, brains can grow new connections at any age.

Brain-based learning and design principles:

Dr. Burton Cohen and Peter Hilts led a discussion about design principles and brain-based learning in the third session. Brain-based learning calls for holistic place-making design principles as described in the following paragraph.

Rich, stimulating environments allow students to create their own space. Establishing group places facilitates social learning. Links between indoors and outside permit movement and oxygenation. Creating symbols of purpose in public places provides coherence and meaning that boost motivation. Safe places reduce feelings of threat. The brain is stimulated by moving through places that vary in shape, color, and light. Environments or displays which change also provide brain stimulation. Ideas develop more rapidly in areas where needed resources are clustered. Flexibility of space is important. Students need distinct places where they can be active or passive, as well as personalized space. The community-at-large offers the optimal learning environment, embodying many of these principles. Educational institutions should examine alternative organizational structures that take advantage of community resources.

Dr. Marty Rossmann led the first session on family. She began by saying family now has a broader definition than the short-lived 1950's nuclear family. As stresses on families continue to increase, educational institutions must work to prepare children for family life as well as for work. In small group discussions, some of the family issues affecting the learning environment were identified. They include: violence in the home; low family income; single-parent families; and frequent family moves. Learning facilities can address family stresses by: zoning for safety and extended hours; offering a broad range of services; becoming a network base for the community, or serving as a satellite or surrogate home; and including community partners in the design process.

In the second session, Dr. Robert Shumer also noted a broad current definition of community, which extends beyond geography. Learning environments should connect with community, and should not stand in isolation as schools have traditionally done. Small group discussions also determined that the learning center can be a center for the community by creating community partnerships, serving as a safe haven, addressing intergenerational needs, and providing a facility for shared, continuous, and flexible use.

The third session, led by Jim Stone, focused on schools and the workplace. Mr. Stone began by saying work has been redefined in terms of what we do to produce value. As this transition has occurred, three prominent gaps have emerged: skills, jobs, and wages. Employers have also noted a lack of interpersonal skills—including attitude and work ethic—that people have traditionally learned at home. Workplace challenges are made more complex by lack of continuity. (Many jobs require overtime while others are only temporary.) Many available jobs do not offer an average income sufficient to support a family. These work place challenges make it import for learning environments based on a work model to focus on developing in students an entrepreneurial spirit, stronger interpersonal skills, and an improved understanding of their role in the workplace.

3. Life-long Learning: Engaging the Whole Community in the Learning Process
Betsy Chase, Dan Bodette, Ginny Pease, and Terry Tofte and Sally Warring led these sessions.

The first session posed the question, "Can All People Learn Well?" The concept of mastery learning maintains that they can. Why is an examination of life-long learning needed? Because, as the traditional schoolhouse changes, education is happening all over. Teaching and learning are becoming "cradle-to-grave" enterprises. All of a community’s resources are put to use with life-long learning. The fluid nature of today’s career paths requires constant updates in skills to keep pace with changing technology. Society is creating an appetite for life-long learning.

At the second session, participants asked, "How can life-long learning and community-wide learning be promoted?" Participants described their most meaningful learning experiences and compared in-class and out-of-class positive learning experiences. Most people felt that adults and children learn in the same way. Participants listed characteristics of an ideal learning environment. These included: cross age group experience; learning though touch; several levels of community; choice of learning; a home for every student; and learning that starts from where you are and what interests you.

The third life-long learning session considered the question, "What are the implications for facilities?" As this discussion illustrates, there are several key elements which support life-long learning. School becomes a "learning community" that offers small groups and peer recognition. The focus is on the learner and the individual. Students are organized in pods of ten, which then form families of 100. The larger House is open and flexible, building a sense of family and relationship from its parts: centrum, pods, labs, and offices. Studios provide a microcosm of the workplace.

Participants designed a magnetic place and its signature space. Ideas included "The Hub Station," with spokes to the outside world; a theatre/fine arts school with a forum; "State Street Learning Center" in an existing storefront in a historic district; and "School of Invention," with labs and a theme of creativity.

4. International Education: A Global Perspective on Learning and Facility Planning

International education includes both acquiring knowledge of another culture and actually studying in another country. Either experience gives students a global perspective and provides an opportunity to compare social and educational values. A country-by-country comparison reveals that America's education system is perhaps the most unusual and distinctive, characterized by local control, individualism, autonomy, and equal rights and opportunities. In contrast, Western Europe puts a premium on high culture and tradition, with separate schools for elite and other students. The former Soviet Union favors collective goals and egalitarianism, and honors vocational education. Japan fosters loyalty to school and society, and encourages both cooperation and competitiveness.

Who controls the education system? In America, control is local. Japan, France and the former U.S.S.R have highly centralized systems. Curricula also show contrasts. While America values innovation and variety, Western Europe tends to rely on national examinations and offers severely limited choices. Evaluations in America are conducted by numerous teachers over time. In Europe and Japan, a centralized system of anonymous graders rank exams. In America, selection occurs by attrition rather than examination. In France, England and Japan, exam failures are common. These and other differences make it difficult for America to borrow educational ideas from other industrialized cultures.

The session also examined facility planning strategies that address the needs of schools across cultures. One strategy is to contribute to the quality of education by improving school buildings. Creating a harmonious balance of unity and diversity is an example of this building-centered approach. Buildings themselves can also serve as learning tools that shape attitudes about environmental and neighborhood renewal.

A second strategy focuses on making the best use of money spent on educational buildings. Suggested approaches include designing for low maintenance and energy consumption, along with imaginative reuse of existing buildings. An organizational master plan was cited as an especially useful tool for multi-entry facilities.

A third strategy is to use the building to help accommodate changes in education or society as a whole. Buildings that are "completed" in stages fulfill this strategy, as do designs that accommodate community heritage and families' varied schedules and needs. In short, the school can be planned as a focus for community development.

Session groups used country comparisons to create goals that include multicultural and language learning; balancing exams with creativity; and international baccalaureate programs as an option in all schools.

The groups also suggested facility planning strategies. These include responding to individual learning styles with flexible programming, expressing heritage and diversity, providing secure learning environments, integrating school and businesses, aligning school and community renewal plans, and developing a school as town center, supplemented with money from other budgets.