BlogSometimes great conversations about school and classroom design are being had by folks who are not traditionally part of the design ‘industry’.
Case in point: AJ, a San Francisco-based teacher focused on language acquisition who offers the following in his teacher/language-oriented blog:
“A study at Georgetown University found that even if the students, teachers, and educational approach remained the same, improving a school’s physical environment could increase test scores by as much as 11 percent.” –Dan Pink
How’s that for a “hard numbers” reason to take school design seriously. We’re all debating, endlessly, the proper teaching approach. Yet here’s a very simple way to boost our effectiveness… one that requires no change to how we teach.
Yes, this is an obsession of mine. And most people just dont get it.
Classroom design has a direct, and powerful, affect on learning. A classroom that is beautiful produces better test scores… and more learning. A dreary/boring classroom has the opposite affect. In other words, those tiny desks, fluorescent lights, white walls, and beige carpets are HARMING your students. They are lowering their scores and decreasing the effectiveness of your lessons. Maybe its not the curriculum..
Perhaps we we dont need another textbook. Or a different approach. Or better teachers. Or better admins.
Maybe we need, more than anything else, good interior decorators. Perhaps an art degree is more useful than a CELTA certificate.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
At a minimum, we need to fight to keep Art in the curriculum - let alone get art degrees!
The environment is as intelligent (or dumb) as you make it. I think most school settings are dumb, dumber and dumbest…Traditional school settings (you know what I’m talking about) are simply holding (most if not all) teachers back from doing what they really really really want to do with their teaching and their student’s learning: Getting kids more excited about taking the time to learn; teaching more relevant stuff; getting kids to collaborate and share their excitement with others.
In our practice, we recognize the unhearded role of the physical environment in teaching and learning, In fact, we spend alot of time understanding the physical positions teachers take when interacting with students - what was once called the study of Proxemics (roughly, the study of spatial distances between individuals in different cultures and situations). A few feet of distance between a student and teacher can be the difference between talking about a problem, and not talking at all (forever - or at least until the semester is over).
There are similarities sure, but there are more than enough differences to warrant more authentic participation on the part of teachers and students in school design. Why wait for architects to restructure their practices to protect themselves from imagined liability - take the law in your own hands teachers! Design!
We know intuitively that some rooms inhibit close, caring relationships while others support them. What is one of the determinants of these social behaviors, besides culture and personality? The physical artifacts in the room - and furniture plays an incredibly important role. Why do you think chairs were unbolted from the floor now well over 100 years ago? ( Come to think of it, why were chairs bolted to the floor in the first place? - hint, hint). As a result, we spend as much time thinking about furnishings as walls, floors and roofs. Funishings in a sense come first, they define the structure of spatial movement and activity - central issues when designing for learning.
If you need soft cushy seats for some kinds to Cave and learn, then do what needs done and fight that nasty administration for some flame retardant materials!
My friends at West High School in Madison, WI (USA) were not afraid to do this! ONe small step…
April 6th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Dr. Lackney’s comment makes the perfect case for why blogging is the next logical step in the development of the architectural design industry. As it currently stands, there is a very unfortunately large number of people excluded from the design process, regardless of project type: K12, Higher Ed, etc. In many cases these people have as much, if not more expertise in how the space will be used than designers. Should this expertise/opinion about what will work best for them go to waste because of something as simple as a scheduling conflict during a design meeting?
Should students’ engagement suffer because they are forced to march single-file into a space that doesn’t “fit”?
Will the community support (and by that I mean PAY FOR) a facility that is not conducive to what they feel their educational needs are?
By utilizing blog technology on a K-12 project, for example, we as designers can now harness not only this expertise, but expertise from a more comprehensive group of:
administrators, District rep’s and other governing bodies (Owners)
teachers and, indeed, students (End Users)
parents and the entire community (Stakeholders)
Bottom line: EVERYONE WINS.