Design for Learning

Ted fiske suggests some ways that schools could be built to meet the needs of contemporary learners Column by Edward B. Fiske in the New Zealand Education Review, August 24, 2001 Durham, North Carolina

The United States is in the midst of primary and secondary school building boom. In order to accommodate the growing number of children who will be knocking at the schoolhouse door in coming years, school districts will have to build an estimated 6000 new schools over the next five years as well as upgrade a huge number of antiquated existing facilities. This need for substantial capital investment in physical plant is a good news-bad news situation. The bad news, of course, is that these new educational facilities will cost billions of dollars. The good news is that the situation offers a chance to do some imaginative thinking about how enlightened school design can contribute to the climate of schools and even enhance academic achievement. Indeed, the topic has already become the focus of some fascinating educational research. I first began thinking about the educational impact of school design a number of years ago when I spent a month visiting schools in Japan and noticed the importance of teachers' rooms. In the U.S. teachers typically have a lounge where they can eat lunch, grab a cup of coffee and relax in each other's company. Everything from the soda machine to the overstuffed couch sends out the message that the function of the room is social rather than professional. In Japan, however, the message is quite different. For one thing, there are often several teachers' rooms, one for math and science teachers, another for language arts specialists and so forth. Each teacher has a desk, usually with easy access to a telephone for contacting students' parents. There is common space, but it is arranged so that it can be – and is – used not only for relaxation but for discussions of curriculum, lesson planning and other professional matters. If we are serious about the notion that U.S. teachers are professionals, then it is imperative that schools provide them with space in which they can engage in professional activities. School design sends out signals about other educational values as well. A major effort is underway in the U.S. and other developed countries to move away from what is frequently dubbed the "factory model school." Beginning in the late 19th century schools in the U.S. adopted the authoritarian and hierarchical organizational principles of business enterprises engaged in mass production. As the late Albert Shanker, head of the American Federation of Teachers, like to put it, schools have traditionally been organized like assembly lines where you "put kids in a room, do something to them, put them in another room, do something else to them, and so on until you declare them educated and send them out the door." School design reflected this factory model through means such as large spaces, classrooms where all attention focused on the teacher, and self-contained classrooms shut off from outside distractions – with the important and highly symbolic exception that the principal had the right to come on the loudspeaker and interrupt whatever learning might be taking place to remind students to bring in their payments for the school trip. Moving away from the factory model of instruction requires new approaches to school design. If we are serious about the notions that students are the real "workers" in school and teachers are "coaches" rather than dispensers of knowledge, then we must organize classrooms around student work stations. Rather than sit them in rows of chairs and desks facing the teacher, they must be provided with personal working space that includes the tools of serious learning, including computers. Similarly, students today need to learn to work collectively as well as on their own, so there must be space for such activities. Technology must become so much a part of the learning process that, unlike the chalkboard at the front of the room, it becomes almost invisible. If we are serious about the idea that learning can no longer be confined to the physical classroom, then schools must exude openness. They must provide places, physical as well as symbolic, where students can access the Internet and other external sources of learning. Openness to the outside has another dimension as well, this one having to do with light. A number of recent studies have shown a strong correlation between student achievement and the amount of light in their classrooms. A recent article in the New York Times reported on a 1999 study done for the California Board for Energy Efficiency that tracked 21,000 students in three different school districts. In Capistrano, California, for example, students in classrooms with the most daylight improved 20 percent faster on math tests and 26 percent faster on reading tests in the course of a year than students in classrooms with the least daylight. Similarly, in Seattle the amount of daylight in a classroom was found to be "a more potent predictor" of student performance than sex, class size or whether the child came from a single-parent household. Researchers have come up with some other intriguing findings as well. They have found that open windows enhance academic progress, but reading comprehension declines when the temperature rises above 74 degrees Farenheit and arithmetic above 77 degrees. Noise has also been shown to have a negative impact on learning, as have colors. As the Times reported, "In general, bright colors stimulate brain activity and respiration. Cool colors promote muscle relaxation and reduction in blood pressure – especially good for calming budding teenagers in the middle grades." It should also come as no surprise that smaller is better not only in class size but in classroom size. Data show that attention spans wane as students get farther than 12 feet from the teacher. So the need to build 6000 new schools offers intriguing possibilities for using school design not only to create optimal conditions for teaching and learning but to send some strong signals about the nature of learning for the 21st century. And if anyone asks me to design a school, I know where I'll start – with a ban on loudspeakers in classrooms.

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