The Relationship Between School Design And Academic Performance

The school building ceases to be only an engineering structure. Now it is part of the educational process. Today, when a methodologist sits down to develop a training course, he also thinks about how best to arrange the desks and where to conduct the lesson: in the classroom, recreation, or even on the street. How to form a studying place and why is it important? What is the relationship between school design and academic performance?

Educational space: what is it and why is it important

Educational space is all that the school consists of. These are the architecture of the building, internal layouts, class sizes, furniture, equipment. All these components are interconnected and affect learning.

Even 30 years ago, we were little worried about the size of the lobby at the school. We went into the building – and ran further, on our own business. Now the situation has changed. In the 21st century, which is called the era of great design, a person does not so much learn about the world as he settles down in it. The idea of what the place where we live, study and work should be has changed. A person wanted a free, functional, air-filled classroom that can be controlled and transformed to fit his needs. This is a general cultural trend that has also affected education. Essay writers for hire confirm that for concentration and productivity, you need the right environment.

The Relationship Between School Design And Academic Performance

The academic building is gradually beginning to play a very important role: to contribute to the achievement of educational goals. The main thing is to plan it correctly.

Сlassroom environment and its impact on learning

When designing a school building, several principles must be taken into account.

Mobility

Mobility allows you to quickly move furniture and equipment, install screens and partitions. Such a space has an important quality – the ability to transform. If necessary, it becomes larger, wider or narrower, depending on the academic objectives.

For example, single desks help to make the class space more mobile: they are lighter and you can quickly create any configurations from them. By simply moving them during the lesson, it will be possible to implement an integrated scenario: someone works independently in a group, someone works individually, someone works with a teacher. It depends on the abilities and level of education of the students. At the same time, everyone has their own pace and everyone feels comfortable.

Mobility allows you to establish an individual approach to children with special needs. For example, a child who gets tired and begins to interfere with others can be given a space with a screen at the end of the classroom.

Functionality

You can build a very beautiful building, make a large courtyard and wide galleries. But this whole complex will lose all meaning if it is not directly related to learning.

Functionality is when any place in the school, even the toilet, solves certain academic problems. If space is managed on the basis of this principle, new opportunities will open up for school education.

For example, if you place biology, chemistry and physics classrooms on the same floor and make a single recreation for them, the school will be able to create a natural science cluster with a single public space. It will be easy to organize an experimentarium, lectures, meetings, and various forms of group work there.

Security

A safe environment is a space that is open and protected from violence. So that there is no place for bullying in the school, it is useful to get rid of dark nooks and crannies – to make them passable and open to everyone. And large windows to the street, transparent partitions between the classroom and the corridor will add light, openness and a sense of connection with the school community and the world outside the building.

Designing a classroom according to academic programs

Before linking the possibilities of space with a methodological program, it is necessary to determine the goals. They may be:

educational: the school transmits knowledge, so the program involves a lot of theory.
competency-based: to teach something means that the priority is practice.
worldview: to form a picture of the world.

In this case, the classes go beyond the standard, there is a place for experiments, discussions and even theatrical performances.

The next step is to decide how to organize training in order to achieve these goals. And here it is useful to think in terms of a scenario: generate a kind of film in your head (and maybe on paper) and describe what exactly the participants in the educational process will do in accordance with the academic program.

Are schools ready for change?

At first glance, it may seem that only private schools can create their own studying place. There is more money, more freedom. Actually it is not. Most private schools operate in very cramped conditions, renting small rooms where they block off everything that is possible. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are few.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash