Lawrence E. Stueck, Ph.
D.
Educational Consultant
P. O. Box 940
Watkinsville, GA 30677
stueckl@AOL.COM
(706) 769-4478
C. Kenneth Tanner,
Professor
Educational Leadership
The University of Georgia
G-10 Aderhold
Athens, GA 30602
ktanner@coe.uga.edu
(706) 542-4067
Paper presented at the annual GASCD conference, Athens,
Georgia. April 26, 1996.
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The Design of Learning Experiences: A Connection to Physical
Environments
Introduction
Given that we only learn what we experience, our goal as
curriculum designers must be to create rich, beautiful,
dynamic, meaningful experiences for the students. With
this idea in mind we must begin to view the physical
environment as the basic context for experiences. The
entire school site of 20+ Acres is considered the
immediate educational context (Obviously, the state,
community, home, etc. are included in the larger
context).
We contend that the design of school facilities is just
as important as the design of the curriculum. How many
of you as curriculum or administrative personnel have
considered yourself as the architect of the learning
environment? Here is the fundamental way of thinking
about learning experiences: Consider the educational
needs of the students, the transportation needs, and the
other basic needs of the students; then design a "place"
for educational experiences. We must not depend on the
digital and written realm alone to provide the richness,
beauty, drama, and relevance the children seek (See for
example, the plans and construction recommended by
Emerson in Appendix A).
There are examples evolving across the planet of ways to
provide a three dimensional educational experience. We
are gathering these together to form a visionary campus
which is also an action research site (Please see our
display model). It is a significant extension of the
alternatives addressed in the structures your school
leaders are buying today, and varies greatly from ideas
in school facilities planning classes.
The major design decisions are being made by architects
with a bias toward buildings and not educational
experiences for students. A second level of decisions
for the purchase of school facilities is made by elected
school board members who may or may not have knowledge
about human development. A third level of decisions on
the configuration of school campuses is made by central
office personnel who are over worked and looking for the
most expedient means of housing their ever expanding
student population. This three-facet matrix is further
confounded by a state level attitude toward facilities
which speaks for itself.
There are many aspects to this visionary campus which
differentiate it from the school environments presently
funded in Georgia:
1) Size: The number of people involved on one site is a
fundamental design consideration. In most of the Georgia
counties experiencing growth, it is possible to build
small campuses for 300-700 students for the same dollars
per student as schools that house 500-1400 students. It
is also possible to operate them for the same dollars.
These smaller facilities create a psychologically and
emotionally better environment for growth. They are both
ecologically sound and easier to integrate with the
community.
2) Context: Information can be experienced in one, two,
and/or three dimensions. Our goal is to allow students
access to information in all three dimensions. This is a
fundamental difference from most of existing systems,
where most information is experienced in digital or
written format. The Walk-In Textbook is a structure
which allows the children to participate in the creation
of experience in the many domains of our culture -
History, Science, Community, Geography, Art, and
Practical Life.
3) Site - Based Management: The physical arrangement of
the buildings, the overall size, the integration of the
material, and the multi age grouping all facilitate
site-based management. Equally important is the shared
decision making method of supervision. Our digital
technology and high professional standards of the
teaching staff allow a decentralized approach to school
management. This alternative will also have significant
implications on parent involvement and the
self-direction of the children.
4) Multi-age grouping: Nowhere in our society is such
limited age grouping found as in our schools. There is
ample evidence that multi-age class groupings are better
developmentally for children. The continuity of having
the same teachers and classmates for three years has
proved to be a more natural organization for living. The
range of learning styles and abilities is given more
room to be nurtured with this arrangement.
5) Inter-disciplinary curriculum: This aspect is about
placing information in a context which relates to life
outside of school. It is an ecological attitude toward
experience where all the parts can be viewed as separate
and also viewed as a united whole. These two ways of
viewing reality which are both powerful and important
sum up much of our work on the design of experience.
They are as related as food and nutrition, content and
context, or qualitative and quantitative. Our language
of dichotomy makes it difficult to hold both views with
equal importance and not to see them as different.
6) Decentralized buildings: This is a powerful
structural variation from the existing approach to the
educational facility. It has implications for solar
heating, natural cooling, day-lighting, site impact,
aesthetic richness, community involvement, and
accessibility to the outdoors. The psychological
ramifications of human scale buildings indicate to us
how far removed from the child the design of school
facilities has become.
7) Ecologically sound design: Sustainable architecture
must be used on school campuses. The many tenets
involved in this movement are those we wish to teach our
children. Wise use of resources, leaving the environment
better than we found it, and a goal of design which may
be replicated, are desirable.
8) Meaningful, purposeful, relevant experience: This
aspect as all others is laced into an attitude toward
the place for learning. The configuration of people, the
clock, the spaces, the forms, and the land are all part
of the curriculum. The case for a constructivist
classroom is here extended to a case for a
constructivist site.
Conclusion
"We are working to involve all aspects of the school and
community in designing learning environments for our
children. Our role is to find a formal base, such as the
university community, from which to work. We need to be
free from current bias about school facilities and the
politics of design and construction so we can focus on
making our schools ready for generations of the future."
Lawrence Stueck
Ken
Tanner
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Bibliography
Frank W. Banghart and Albert Trull, Jr.
(1973). Educational Planning. New York:
Macmillan.
Basil Castaldi (1994). Educational Facilities.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Glen I. Earthman. (1992). Planning Educational
Facilities for the Next Century. Reston, VA:
ASBO.
H. Lee Hales (1984). Computer-Aided Facilities
Planning. New York: Marcel Dekker.
Sybil Kritchevsky and Elizabeth Prescott
(1977). Planning Environments for Young
Children. Washington, D.C.: NAEYC.
Jean and Robert McClintock (1970). Henry
Barnard's School Architecture. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Andrea Palladio (1965). The Four Books of
Architecture. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
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Appendix A
The school design outlined
in this appendix
correlates with much of
our thinking about
learning environments.
Consider this 1842
statement:
So much do the future
health, vigor, taste, and
moral principles of the
pupil depend upon the
position, arrangement, and
construction of the
school-house, that
everything about it is
important. p. 128.
(From: Jean and Robert
McClintock (1970). Henry
Barnard's School
Architecture. New York:
Teachers College Press.)