School Design Studio

Scotch Oakburn College's Middle School in Tasmania, Australia opens as excited students and teachers jump right into learning the 21st Century Way

This is a short photo summary of Scotch Oakburn College in Tasmania, Australia we at FNI started working on in 2004. I am so excited to see the fruits of our labors, and those of our local architectural colleagues on this project. The school is organized into learning communities of 150 students with associated space to help them define their identity as a small community within the larger school. Integrated project-based learning is a strong part of the school's philosophy to teaching and learning.
This first space is what we call the DaVinci Studio. DaVinci was a Renaissance Man, someone who integrated the disciplines and did not think of him self as one thing of another. In the same vein, we encourage educators to think of the Studio (fully equipped for both science and art) as a studio for integrated project-based learning. We are proponents of moving full tilt forward with wireless laptop computing across the entire campus including the outdoor spaces surrounding the building. Kids may or may not have access at home. If they do, then they take to the environment right way, if they don't, they now have access they didn't have. This allows for learning outside of the classroom and lots of communication between teacher and students outside of class time. Bean bags are a must in all classrooms and spaces in the school! They create personal space for students when they need it. Think of this happening in a US school - forget it, such stodgy administrators I want to puke! Let kids be kids once in a while. The revolution within classrooms are the Smart Boards that allow teachers and students to access the web from the classroom making every single classroom a potential distance learning lab. Using simple tools like Skype, that now eight million people are using for free when connecting computer to computer, kids can communicate with their peers in Japan, Indonesia, or even the United States (if you get the time zones to work out). Most teachers I've seen control this technology for lecturing, but that is a sad state of affairs! This tool, placed responsibly in the hands of students could unleash an amazing outpouring of exploration and self-directed learning! Outdoor space is a critical must for kids (and adults for that matter). Vitamin D from the sun, fresh air to breath, and outdoor learning opportunities make it a simple no brainer. Of all the ideas we propose, indoor-outdoor connections are one of the most favorite for teachers and students.

Training Teachers to Create Effective Environments for Learning

I have recently published a new peer-reviewed article academically entitled, "Teacher Environmental Competence in Elementary School Environments", for Children, Youth and Environments. Download TeacherEnvCompetence

Abstract
Teacher environmental competence, the ability to understand and effectively use physical instructional space for a pedagogical advantage, continues to receive limited attention in education. Exploring the perceptions of 20 teachers at five urban elementary schools, this study investigates teachers’ understanding and effective use of the physical environment to meet instructional goals. It examines organizational factors that contribute to poor environmental competence in school environments. The action research approach employed in this study includes a set of interconnected training, research and action activities. Once teachers were introduced to a means of communicating their environmental experience through the training component, they were able to articulate specific environmental concerns, see their interrelationship, and make judgments of priority. The paper suggests avenues for raising the environmental competence of educators within the context of educational reforms advocating for collaborative, learner-centered environments.

Citation: Lackney, Jeffery A. (2008). “Teacher Environmental Competence in Elementary School Environments.” Children, Youth and Environments 18(2): 133-159. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye.

I would characterize this paper as a reinterpretation and extension of my action research dissertation. Since practicing, the action research component has had to go underground a bit, and my reflective practice side has emerged. Out of this new work, I have rediscovered the critical importance of training teachers to more effectively use their teaching and learning environments, especially when sheparding a school into considering the impact of 21st Century learning on school design. From our stop/starts in bringing teachers along with the ideas of learning studios over classrooms, and collaborative learning settings over direct instructional space, I have realized the importance of spending quality time with staff to both tailor space to their immediate understandings, while designing space in such as way as to encourage positive progressive change. My answer has been to propose the concept of educational commissioning, an idea I first articulated on designshare a few years ago.

Ordrup School in Gentofte Denmark is Designed for Personalized Learning

Check out this wonderful video of the new elementary school at Ordrup school in Gentofte, Denmark that features authentic new paradigm learning environments, privacy niches and "cave space" for personalized learning, as well as, group learning. Going well beyond traditional school design with a teacher’s desk and a black board, Ordrup School in Gentofte, Denmark, has created a variety of rooms with space for differentiated teaching and creative thinking.

The school features true new paradigm learning environments with privacy niches and "cave space", heightened window seating to sit and look outside, green platforms with round, red holes where discussions can buzz and bubble and large upholstered tubes where you can hide with a good book or to spend some time alone.

Furnishings become objects that are interesting, and invite curiosity and imagination about their use.  They are specific, as well as, flexible because they are abstract enough to be used and interpreted in multiple ways (e.g., columns). They subdivide space, and also are child scaled spaces (like the green rings that provide cave space and form a wall).

The design, created by Bosch and Fjord, is based in three concepts, ‘peace & absorption’, ‘discussion & cooperation’ and ’security & presence’, that will separate the individual areas in distinct functions and create new rooms for learning. By separating the activities and creating varied rooms space is created for dissimilarity in both teaching and play where the learning situation will be optimized.

Can There be a Creative Tension Between the Realities of Teaching and Reform Ideals?

Whenever we as outside professionals and so-called experts are called upon to provide assistance in changing educational environments, an interesting dance occurs between us as the outsiders to the school culture and the insiders to that culture, teachers. "We've seen reforms come and we'll see them go. We'll outlast them including this one," or, "you're expecting us to change again?", or "we do these things already." In most instances, we all know that the truth is somewhere in the middle, and that is where the conversation needs to start. For the educational planning process to be effective and successful holding the Creative Tension between current reality and future possibility is key. Not only do educational planners/reformers need to listen to the stories of classroom realities, but teachers need to consider possibilities for change. Somewhere in the middle is the best fit solution for both students AND teachers.

For understanding more about the current realities of teachers in their workplace, the classroom, a new book review by Joan Y. Pedro of Mary Kennedy's new book Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform in the April 26, 2007 edition of Teachers College Record helps those of us on the outside to understand more about what is going on inside classrooms that makes reform difficult if not impossible.

As Pedro states, "Mary Kennedy has produced a very interesting and thought-provoking book which captures the heart of teaching and the many drawbacks that teachers encounter in the classroom. The main aim of this book is to portray the way teaching “really” looks and to learn why reform efforts are not generally successful. Kennedy puts forth the notion that teachers are aware of reform efforts but that they are so burdened with the everyday orchestration of teaching and learning that reform is not always at the forefront of their thinking or practice. Kennedy carefully and in a very powerful way has produced research on teaching that is valuable in this age of reform, and which represents the constant struggle faced by educators as they seek to balance high-quality instructional practices with external calls for accountability that often come from corporate and public leaders."

Pedro concludes: "Teachers can gain many thoughtful insights into teaching, and reformers can gain a better understanding of how teachers operate and move away from their narrow lenses of how teaching should be performed. School reform needs good teaching and can be improved when we consider the complexities of teaching."

 

Integrating Live, Work, Play!

In trying to understand what is next on the horizon of school design, we need look no further than commercial workplace environments where change and innovation is constant.

As Loryn Hatch reports on Refinery 29 Studio 5 in 1 in Williamsburg, the newest addition to the North 6th shopping row in Brooklyn, New York, work, play, and commerce converge in a new all-in-one destination. Studio 5 in 1 merges process and product in a space that acts as a collective home for consumers, established and burgeoning designers, and anyone who might find a space in between in an old 19th-century warehouse.

As graphic designer and founder, Norman Rabinovich, setting out to redefine the warehouse and his day-to-day life told Loryn Hatch, "I got lonely working alone and sought to create a community where people can work together or individually, sharing opinions, projects, and perspectives". His designs led him to an office/studio/shop for those who lack the social and professional advantages of a workplace, as well as a storefront to offer their goods. Separated from the group's studio by a transparent divider, the floor-to-ceiling wood-paneled shop has a roughed-up, antique aesthetic created by recycled planks and a previously abandoned, stripped-down piano. As Norman explains: "the studio is an organic entity with a face that can change at any given time."

Textbook on Educational Facility Planning

Ken Tanner and I have co-authored the definitive textbook entitled Educational Facilities Planning: Leadership, Architecture and Management. Our essential goal in writing this book on educational architecture is to establish a common language, a Lingua Franca, for better more constructive communication among the various groups and interests involved in planning, designing, constructing, and using educational facilities. We have found that the communication divide between architecture and education, and in general between researchers and practitioners in both fields are as wide as they have ever been, despite sincere, thoughtful and tireless efforts of individuals in both disciplines – many voices of whom we have endeavored to capture in this book. Flowing from our fundamental goal of improved cross-disciplinary communication, are several purposes for writing this book. First, we aim to introduce ideas that encourage people who plan and design physical learning environments to become more responsive to students’ needs and community cultures. Second, we anticipate this book will provide a scholarly reference work for practicing educational leaders and architects that picks up where most guideline books leave off. Finally, we intend for this book to be the primary textbook for students of education architecture and planning who plan to either become school administrators, professional designers or educational researchers.

Project “CO-SEED”: COmmunity-School Environmental EDucation

Michael Duffin, Principal of Program Evaluation and Educational Research (PEER) Associates in Swanzey, New Hampshire, recently completed his dissertation evaluating a successful EE (Environmental Education) school in Boston. The centerpiece is a relatively short, user-friendly portrait of the school, including a section specifically on the leadership role of the principal in supporting the transformation to being a model environmental school. The evaluation report and full dissertation are available.

Duffin, M. T. (2006). Portrait of an urban elementary school: Place-based education, school culture, and leadership. Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University, Yellow Springs, OH.

Project CO-SEED’s primary purpose is to help schools and communities work together to simultaneously strengthen academic achievement, community vitality, and environmental quality. CO-SEED* is a project of Antioch New England Institute of Antioch University New England in Keene, NH, and has been implemented at twelve sites since 1998.

Collaborative Space

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Educators know that authentic collaborative learning prepares learners for the changing learning expectations in the real-world through an active learning process that teaches critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, negotiation skills, reaching consensus, using technology, and taking responsibility for one's own learning. Social discourse and collaborative learning are critical to the development of well-rounded citizens. These skills are actually at the top of the list of qualification for success in almost any global profession.

How can schools be designed to support collaborative learning? Virtually all of the space presently in our seconardy schools are designed for lecture-mode, discipline-specific, teacher talk. When schools attempt to create collaborative space for students for cooperative learning, they are almost always limited to 24 x 36 self-contained boxes and standard turn of the century desks. Their options are limited.

However, there IS another way to create collaborative spacees, and we need only look to the adult work environment where collaboration is key to successful projects. School planners and architects are developing a variety of school designs that support personalized, self-directed learning.

COLLABORATION AS A PATTERN OF LEARNING

My partners at Fielding Nair International for the past 5 years has been translating both educational research and best practices to into usable design patterns for schools. At the core of our work is the notion that the conventional classroom has straightjacketed educators into thinking there is only one way to organize learners: one teacher to 25-30 students. With the notion of collaborative learning as well as collaborative teaching, this fixed notion "class size" has become obsolete accept in administrative bean counting.

Let the bean counting go on if necessary, but we shouldn't be limiting our thinking regarding how we organize ourselves for learning!

DESIGN FEATURES FOR COLLABORATION

Susan Wolff has identified a variety of features of collaborative environments:

- variable sizes spaces that are easily to change to support several learning activities within the same space, to encourage integration of courses and programs

- individual work spaces that can be personalized providing a sense of ownership and teaches responsibility for one’s own learning

- faculty team spaces with adjacent material preparation areas and meeting space that encourages team teaching, mentoring of faculty and collaboration.

Functional spaces for collaborative learning activities might include:

+ presentation spaces for individuals and teams to demonstrate their learning and share knowledge acquired with the larger learning community

+ the continued need for classroom spaces for direct instruction of concepts, content and skills

+ process galleries, studios that allow for the display of on-going projects to showcase concept development

+ project space that provides a variety of work surfaces, storage and access to technology to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork

+ home base for gathering of learners and faculty to seek assistance and resources or hold group discussions

+ informal, non-classroom, learning spaces such as study spaces, lounges and outdoor spaces to provide areas for socializing, and serendipitous meetings that can foster creative thought and solutions to problems

+ and collaboration incubator, idea generation space to support creativity, teamwork, prototyping of concepts which can also encourage the involvement of local employers in the development of projects.

+ corridors can be replaced with other kinds of spaces, which permit circulation but also serve the goals of social and emotional development. There are informal social gathering places for student to assemble in conversational groups throughout the school and on the school grounds.

+ indoor collaborative spaces allow students to have access to full-service kitchen or mini-service area with a refrigerator, sink and or microwave.

+ collaborative spaces placed adjacent to more formal instructional areas can serve as additional informal learning breakout spaces. They are not visually or acoustically disruptive to more formal (quiet) instructional spaces.

+ Within the collaborative space there are areas for student display of events, work products and other announcements of interest to students.

+ Unique floor and wall surfaces, accent lighting and other physical features delineate the collaborative spaces.

Many of these design features are being used in new schools across the world, and many of them can be created in existing school buildings as well with a little innovative thinking and a willingness to take collaborative learning seriously.

Children, Youth & Environments

If you haven't done already, you owe it to yourself to visit Children, Youth and Environments, a wonderful site for research on environments for children in a variety of settings, not just school environments. When we think in this culture about kids, we often focus on structured and institutional settings such as schools and child care settings. However, there are many latent environments that I would argue are as important, if not, MORE important for child development such as the home, oudoor environments and all forms of public places.

"Children, Youth and Environments is a refereed publication dedicated to improving the lives of young people. The journal has a multidisciplinary audience of researchers, policy makers and professionals in 151 countries and is guided by a distinguished Editorial Advisory Board."

"In addition to peer-reviewed research articles, on this site you will find field reports, book reviews, a database of individuals and organizations, a calendar of upcoming events, an extensive searchable bibliography, video links, and much more. Our unique combination of information resources facilitates the sharing of knowledge and experience concerning the development of children and youth in different environments."

33 Principles for Educational Design

I have enjoyed reading your "33 Principles of Educational Design". It struck a chord with me because too many times I see designers jumping in and rushing for an 'architectural' result. There are some amazing opportunities out there at the moment, and dare I say it, 'most' are being completely wasted with a lack of proper pre-planning, consultation, and vision. It is very easy to read and understand, and this clarity is obviously intended for its value to educators. I wish that something like this could be distributed to all schools by their respective Departments, just to show what is possible, and what they should expect from their architects.

"Sam Aukland, Principal, Aukland Architecture"