Linking Architecture and Education: Sustainable Design of Learning Environments

Appendix B: Ideas for Future Research

406 | Appendix B Ideas for Future Research 1.  Develop and write new curricula based on environmental learning for all ages and tied to existing standards and the latest educational theory. Use and test the curricula in different demographic regions. 2.  Develop and test a pilot or charter school based on the Architecture and Children program and the design studio workshop supported by design of physical spaces that encourages hands-on learning. 3.  Explore the impacts of universal design and design for inclusion on teaching strategies and learning. Do negative attitudes toward inclusion improve when supported by spaces designed for inclusion? 4.  Design prototype professional educational learning environments that teach educators about using the environment as a three-dimensional textbook (including use of technology and multimedia resources, outdoor learning, community service, design, display techniques, and how to develop the knowing eye). Conduct follow-up studies to see how teachers facilitate learning in their classrooms after training. 5.  Program, design, and measure iconic elements of school designs over time. Compare manifestations at different sites and determine which have the greatest potential for learning and why. 6.  Collect data on which school designs last (physically, functionally, and aesthetically) and analyze why. Establish Web sites and systems for communication of this and similar information. 7.  Design environments that empower students to make their own educational choices and measure performance results using multiple assessment tools including traditional testing, portfolio work, and rubrics. 8.  Design programs that involve students in school design and finish with assessments of student involvement and attitudes toward schools following the design process. | 407 9.  Research, design, produce, and field-test new furniture suited to children and education. 10.  Conduct and publish more qualitative research on the human response across body, mind, and spirit to school facilities, or how buildings teach through the design of windows, doors, floors, and other typical building elements. 11.  Design and operate a full-school participatory community service program for a public school. Write a dissertation on the results, including community attitudes toward school funding before and after the service program. 12.  Conduct behavioral response/psychological studies on children in academic and/or ambient settings designed to test and support developmental needs, constructivist theory, or other educational values. 13.  Implement and test the ATA Taxonomy in classroom settings for all ages. Design a model curriculum that extends vertically through the age levels, or that builds in a spiral fashion based on the six steps for experiential learning. Compare to traditional models. 14.  Research and develop a list of one hundred interdisciplinary concepts that could be used to build an entire environmental curriculum and/ or translated into design. Test the curriculum in schools. 15.  Develop POE documents and surveys that measure students’ academic performance within schools based on learning from the environment and how the environment is used as a teaching tool. 16.  Develop a system (supported by formats, surveys, checklists, etc.) that integrates school performance from initial programming through design and post-occupancy use. 17.  Develop a higher education program for credit enabling crossover between disciplines, including opportunities to team teach in our public schools. Devise a simple licensure and professional development program for nontraditional educators (architects, engineers, lawyers, doctors, nutritionists, ecologists) to teach in the schools. 18.  Continue research on green architecture and its many emerging shifts in thinking, and apply its concepts to schools. Measure student understanding of green design when they occupy such schools, as compared to children attending traditional schools. 19.  Design a school that is a test facility for ecological design and document the process. Develop an ecological curriculum to accompany the design. Appendix B 408 | 20.  Replicate some suggested models of classrooms for the future (chapter 9), and test student performance and satisfaction using the models. 21.  Work with children to design and build learning landscapes (chapter 10), and measure student learning from outdoor environments. 22.  Develop fitness and exercise areas for schools and test student health as compared to traditional gym programs. Add nutritional education and compare again. 23.  Test and compare approaches to security in schools, e.g., systemic and cultural versus policing, and the attendant architecture that supports each approach. What works? 24.  Design a school run and maintained by children with corresponding stewardship curricula, and collect long-term data on future citizenship roles of students who attend the school. Do students raised in this tradition expand their learning into a global worldview? 25.  In schools...