Our Vision
The Goals of the Educational Specifications
Read our complete Vision for the Educational Specifications or follow the links below for specific information.
Learning Starts with Physiology Back to Top
When thinking about a child’s environment, their total environment must be considered. For some students, basic needs are not always met outside of school. Therefore it is important for design to intentionally create school and classroom environments that intentionally provide for a child’s basic needs.
The Learning Environment is Evolving Back to Top
The educational experiences of today’s students are different than the ones many of us experienced as children. As research provides better information about teaching and learning, the “spirit of the times” change with each successive generation. The learning environment must reflect and support student needs of today.
Learning in Inquiry-Based Environments Back to Top
Real world problem solving offers opportunities to work alone while others may require collaboratively working together. Working independently in self-directed study, students learn to make decisions, solve problems, and ultimately form their own positions. Working together in a collaborative group, students learn how to share their position with others and how to evaluate the position of others. They learn to see the world from multiple points of view.
By focusing on investigation and decision making, the responsibility of learning rests with the students. Working this way shapes students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Students learn how to think, and more importantly, they learn to reflect on the process, and how that process results in a solution. Therefore, classrooms and schools today, design is conducive to inquiry-based learning experiences.
Learning on Your Own Path Back to Top
Fostering and supporting life-long, self-directed learners prepares students to be both college and career ready and is the end goal. And it is acceptable for the path taken to be different for every child. Every student is unique and learns differently, thus creating environments for all learners becomes even more important. Schools and classrooms intentionally constructed to support a variety of learning styles, offers multiple methods of presentation, and affords students multiple options for their active participation and expression better meets the diverse needs of students today.
Learning is Flexible and Agile Back to Top
As education shifts from a teacher-centered model to more studentcentered, supporting a variety of learning typologies including active, selfdirected, and project-based learning in addition to standard instruction must all be considered. In addition to facilitating variety, the classroom must be easily and quickly reconfigured by both students and teachers alike. Thus, to support a student-centered model classroom agility is essential.
- Continue reading about how Learning is Flexible and Agile
- Experience an interactive agility demonstration
Learning is Inspiring Back to Top
Colors, natural and artificial lighting, materials, and student work form much of the sensory education that underlie the learning environment. Brain research tells us that students develop intellect, build memories, and make meaning through their senses. The research also says that students retain, retrieve, and learn best within environments that are sensually rich. The built environment will either enhance or impair the learning environment. Over– and under-stimulating spaces make for poor learning environments.
At that same time, spaces that are intentionally designed to balance these stimuli are shown to reduce students’ stress, improve their attention span and ability to focus, alter their perception of time, and reduce both absenteeism and vandalism. Expanding design thinking beyond sight and sound creates a healthy learning environment when it includes the feel, smells and tastes of life, too.
Teaching is Collaborative Back to Top
Supporting a variety of student learning styles changes how teachers work together. Teachers work with a number of para-educators, student teachers, and special education professionals. Counterparts may share the classroom, use the shared learning space, or work in a designated area. Team teaching allows teachers to complement each other as well as offer students the opportunity to work with different teacher styles and personalities, while still promoting self-directed, and small group learning experiences.
As teachers work in teams, the relationship between learning spaces becomes even more important. The ability to open and physically join classrooms supports team teaching, self-directed learning and small group work. Providing shared learning space supports teachers and students engaging in long-term projects. Visibility is essential for teachers as a larger, more open space allows for the supervision of students. With flexible space, learning becomes both pervasive and visible.
Learning is Connecting with Nature Back to Top
Nature is a critical part of the learning environment that exists both beyond the building and within it. The site presents the opportunity to be in nature, and more importantly, the opportunity to establish an immediate awareness of and connection to the natural world.
Being outside is not only important, it is a necessary condition for learning. You must build opportunities for students to be active and outside for the maximum amount of time possible.
Learning is Healthy Back to Top
Schools play an important role in promoting lifelong habits for students such as diet, cooking, fitness, and self-care. Providing healthy environments is not enough; we must think about the culture and habits of mind that our environments engender. Done well, dining plays an important role in providing sensory-rich experiences: food has different textures, smells, sounds, and temperatures.
Learning is Safe and Secure Back to Top
Fostering a safe and secure learning environment requires new thinking about the relationship between school and the public at large. Without being actively involved with a school, it is difficult for community members to understand what happens within and, therefore, are unable to make a personal connection. Without personal connection, public support is difficult. Only by welcoming the community into our schools and making the inner-workings transparent will community support become possible. We must identify ways in which the school may serve the community and vice-versa.
The Power of Innovative Schools Back to Top
Educational institutions continue to learn more and more about what makes students successful. Creative, active, and innovative models require teaching and learning spaces beyond the traditional model. Innovation is not about trying new things “just because”; innovation is matching students with learning environments that play to their passions and interests.
Read more about how these visions are implemented as Space Diagrams. →