Human Response to Interior Learning Environments

I ran across an interesting document published by National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities that discussed educational trends that will be shaping the schools of the near future.  These twelve trends included ideas like: “Paper is Disappearing”, “Technology Goes Big Time” and “Special Education has gone mainstream”.  The trend that I felt was most pertinent to designers was: “Classrooms are Being Reconfigured”. If proven to be true, this trend would require a major revamping of the way schools are designed. 

Let’s first discuss how classrooms are being reconfigured.  When I was in grade school on the first day of school you always knew that there was going to be 20-30 other children in your class. How your teacher was assigned was unknown, it seemed as though a computer just divided up the 100 children in your grade and assigned them at random to the 4 teachers that taught that grade.  All the class rooms were in the same vicinity and all of the students were taught the same curriculum.  Well this trend suggests that those days are over.  Have you ever heard of the VARK learning test? It’s a series of questions that helps you discover how you best learn. “V” stands for Visual. “A” is Aural. “R” is Read/Write”.  “K” is Kinesthetic.  Well, this design trend would take the VARK learning test to the next level.   Your education would be catered to the way that you best learn.  Read/write and Aural students may still be in the classrooms we have seen for the last 50 years, but that’s where the similarities end.  If you were a visual learner you would need a classroom that included visually based learning apparatuses.  These rooms would be shaped primarily by technology. If you were a kinesthetic learner you would need a classroom that allowed for hands-on demonstrations and student participation.  Rooms like labs and shops would be the norm in that style of learning.

This will not only affect the classroom but the building as a whole.  Electrical and ventilation systems will have to be designed to accommodate state-of-the-art science labs and every student having a digital workstation at every desk.  But hey, these are just prospective trends.  Maybe nothing will change. Maybe our children will be learning in classrooms just like the ones we learned in. I doubt it, but maybe.

Reference List:

http://www.edfacilities.org/pubs/trends2007.pdf

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire