This area of the website is all about discovering the best environments for learning. Not only are many old, factory-like schools in need of repair, but they urgently need remodeling and rewiring to better serve today's more active and interactive educational programs. Recently, with interest in creating smaller schools, a variety of ways are being found to create a number of schools within existing buildings. The Small Schools Workshop is a great source of information on this movement. It is also the case that many new buildings are being built around a new vision of the kinds of educational settings that will enhance and facilitate learning.
You will find articles here by visionary architects and educational planners. In offering new ideas about education to architects and new ideas about buildings to educators, we hope to offer a bridge between those who build and remodel schools and those who teach in them. The information we offer here is practical as well as visionary, and comes out of solid research and real applications. We also offer ways for you to get in touch with some of the foremost leaders in this field.
Articles
The Challenge of Change
Grace Sammon
How to create a climate for successful change.
Perspectives on Architecture and Children
Anne Taylor, Ph.D.
After more than twenty years of work in the design of learning environments for children, George Vlastos, Architect, and Anne Taylor of the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning and School Zone Institute, have developed a new system for teaching Architecture and design. It is called Architectural Design Education. The system teaches the problem solving process used in the creation of material culture and buildings to students at a young age. It integrates creative activities usually associated with art class with the traditional disciplines taught in a classroom setting. Finally, it improves both teachers and students' ability to interpret, relate to, and positively affect their environment.
Less Is More:Learning Environments for the Next Century
Steven Bingler
Would you like to attend a school located in a museum or an aquarium? Steven Bingler of Concordia, Architecture for Understanding, describes innovative partnerships forged among schools and community groups to share facilities. The result is exciting; the projects are involving students in dynamic, meaningful environments and community members are reaping big benefits. Concordia works with Project Zero and Anne Taylor Associates.
Place as Knowledge • Knowledge as Place
Steven Bingler and Bobbie Hill
Pioneering school architects envision a school building as a three-dimensional encyclopedia of learning tools.
Essential Criteria for an Ideal Learning Environment
Dale Lang
Explores whether schools and classroom spaces enhance or detract from the learning process. Notes that when planning or remodeling a classroom environment, a successful learning space requires that both the educator and designer understand and be aware of the following qualities: size, shape, and scale; acoustical quality and noise control; illumination and views; temperature, humidity, and ventilation; communications, electrical power, and technology; and material finishes, textures, and colors.
A Multiply Intelligent Community Education and Family Center
Judy Bonne
A community learning and training center in Rockford, Illinois that is serving people of all ages with a variety of innovative programs. A part of The Abilities Center, it includes a school and Head Start daycare center, a Mom's Clinic and more.
Restructuring Educational Facilities
Emily Millet and Jim Croteau, Leon County (FL) Schools
Emily Millet and Jim Croteau begin a dialog about restructuring school facilities to meet the needs of school populations in rapidly changing circumstances. Their article includes a selection of documents outlining policy issues that schools and districts must include in the planning process.
Reinventing Learning Spaces
Francis Hunkins
In 1994 Fran Hunkins called for a radical rethinking of school design in a talk at a meeting of participants in the Center for Architecture and Education. His words reflect our focus and goals and can serve as an introduction to the purpose and work of the Center. He calls for spaces that will facilitate the creation of meaning, places where knowledge can be constructed, experiments conducted, investigations carried out, and results of inquiry shared and shaped; spaces where the curriculum can serve as the raw material for the knowledge-work process.
The Ecology of the Learning Environment
Anne Taylor, Ph.D.
What is the school of the future? How can the learning environment enrich the curriculum? How would teachers and students redesign their classrooms?
Programming and Design of Public Schools Within the Context of Community
Anne Taylor
A very comprehensive report on an architect/educator's School Zone model for new school design.
An Ohio Champaign Aging To Be New
Dave Faulkner and Rick Smyre
Champaign County, Ohio's economic development director and the president of the Center for Communities of the Future explain how a Big Idea was developed to create a learning community that combines cutting edge communications technology, transformational leadership, and cultural transformation.
Global Learning City/Region Networks and the PALLACE Project
Norman Longworth
The author, Vice President of the World Initiative on Lifelong Learning, describes how the PALLACE Project (Promoting Lifelong Learning in Australia, Canada, China, and Europe) makes links between cities, creeds, cultures, and countries to facilitate the building of a new learning and understanding world.
A Case Study of Community Building and School District Renewal
Michael Silver, Ph.D.
Tukwila, Washington is an area in transition, a mobile community with many newly-arrived immigrants, and socioeconomic segregation. These forces tend to polarize the residents, making it hard to marshal resources to solve problems. A report compiled for the Institute for Educational Inquiry by the Superintendent of the South Central School District on the collaborative process that resulted in the Tukwila Community Summit, which was held to identify the existing strengths within South Central and Tukwila that can be built upon when addressing the issues facing the community.
Enabling Children to Map out a More Equitable Society
Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA
Sharon Sutton presents a model of environmental learning that was conceived in response to the diminishing sense of community in postindustrial society, and to the conflicts that result from increasing socioeconomic differences. This three-factor paradigm specifies the values, content, and teaching methods that can enable children to understand their capacity to shape a just and peaceful global environment. It is based on a creative enterprise akin to a quilting bee. This model has the potential to involve children in a powerful discourse on environmental justice.
Community Learning Centers
Dee Dickinson
An extension of the community learning center concept is found in the Fidalgo Elementary School in Anacortes, a small town on an island along the northern coast of Washington state.
A Reader writes in . . .
Carol Lewke
A reader responds to Dickinson's article, Community Learning Centers.
A New Place to Learn
Dee Dickinson
What does your dream place to learn look like? How does it work? What kinds of teaching and learning strategies does it implement? We are seeking your thoughts about new kinds of learning places that do not yet exist, that are in the planning stages, or are already under way.
Weaving the Urban Network
Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA
An innovative curriculum package, called the Urban Network, provides teachers and principals with a guide to the process of using the built environment, urban elementary schools, to stimulate community participation in the schools. Fourth, fifth, and sixth graders study their school environment, plan a project for enhancing their neighborhood, and then get others involved to help them carry out their plans. The article describes a group's experiences using the curriculum.
The Art of Learning
Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA
A sidebar to Weaving the Urban Network.
Learning Society of the Future: Questions to Consider
Dee Dickinson
Today, everywhere in the world, people of all ages are asking how educational systems can be transformed into ones truly appropriate for our time.? How can people of all ages learn how to learn, unlearn, and relearn? How can they develop skills to deal with complexity and challenges that have never before existed? How can schools that were created for another time meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population of students? Can schools alone meet these needs? In considering these questions, Dee has us look at new possibilities for individuals, learning communities, and an emerging global learning society.
Community Learning Centers: Keystones for Building Viable Educational Systems
Dee Dickinson
Schools and community centers can serve the learning needs of students, their parents, and communities in innovative and effective ways.
Education 2000: Creating Modern Learning Communities
John Abbott
In the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s an influential group of business people and educators met to plan a long-term program of educational reform based in a community. Out of their Education 2000 conference came a report that set forth two hypotheses: First that new approaches to the teaching/learning process are now available which are more effective than traditional teaching programs, and second that such approaches to learning would help young people develop a range of skills that are valued in the workplace--such as confidence, personal responsibility, enterprise, and working in groups--as well as the intellectual skills associated with traditional learning.
Lifelong Learning: A Dream
Malcolm Knowles
Knowles outlines his vision of a network of community learning centers, where families could pursue learning goals in a collaborative, supportive environment in a chapter from the book Creating the Future.
Creating a Safe Space in Which to Grow
Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA
What effect does a constant state of emergency and stress have on communities and the children who live in them? What can we do when overload causes so many of us to turn away from problems? Sharon Sutton is concerned with how children develop as caring, responsible citizens in an environment that seems out of control, and how they develop a collective identity that is powerful enough to combat the destructiveness of drugs and poverty. Her work has led her to the conclusion that a transformation of prevailing concepts of schooling is imperative and she presents suggestions for how architects can participate in such a transformation.
Developing Community: One School's Fruitful Journey
Dan Keller
*Note: It is necessary to have the most current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader on your system in order to view this document. It is available as a free download at Adobe.
Hands On Civics: An Approach to Increase Community Intelligence
Milenko Matanovic
Students become civic planners by designing their own community and in the process begin to understand the complexities facing contemporary communities.
Bibliography Jennifer Yee and Dan Carlson
Brubaker, C. William, Planning and Designing Schools, McGraw Hill Text, 1998.
Clinchy, Evans, ed. Creating New Schools: How Small Schools are Changing American Education, Teacher's College Press, 2000.
George, Paul S. and John H. Lounsbury, Making Big Schools Feel Small: Multiage Grouping, Looping, and Schools-Within a School, National Middle School Assn, 2000.
De Jesus, Raquel, Design Guidelines for Montessori Schools, U. of Wisconsin, 2000.
Sutton, Sharon E., Learning Through the Built Environment: An Ecological Approach to Child Development, Irvington, 1985.
Taylor, Anne, School Zone: Learning Environments for Children, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1983.
The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Education Steven Harrison
(Re)Designing Learning Environments
This site focuses on the opportunity new school construction projects are bringing to public education. Over the next five years the United States will spend an estimated $100 billion to build and renovate public schools. It is our hope that together we can resist building new schools that function like old schools. (Re)Designing Learning Environments offers an in-depth journey into the planning and creation of new types of schools and learning environments. The first case study launching today focuses on Minnesota's School of Environmental Studies (SES), located adjacent to the Minnesota Zoo. This will be an ongoing project with additional case studies of new schools to come.
12 Design Principles Based on Brain-based Learning Research
How to design learning environments that support brain based learning.
National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities
This Clearinghouse is part of the ERIC database system. Its website features bibliographies, links and construction data.
Centre for Creative Communities
The centre, based in the UK, believes that the arts and creativity are central to human development and essential elements in building sustainable communities. This link goes to their online newsletter.
The Creative Class
Site dedicated to issues relating to creativity and the community.
CEEDS for Change
CEEDS is an interdisciplinary, multicultural group of faculty at the University of Washington that seeks to enhance learning and community well-being through design.
Small Schools Workshop
The Small Schools Workshop (SSW) is a resource for public schools and school districts engaged in restructuring and whole-school improvement. The Workshop brings experience and expertise in elementary and secondary school redesign, curricular focus and building professional teams by providing guidance and professional development to large public schools that are in the process of restructuring into smaller learning environments. This site includes a small schools directory for the U.S.
America Goes Back to School
Some thoughts on modernizing and designing schools for the 21st Century.
Concordia Architects
Concordia has established a research alliance with Anne Taylor Associates to focus on the integration of educational content with educational facilities, and with Howard Gardner and Project Zero to explore the relationship between architectural innovation and architectural design.
© February 2006
