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Designing An Environment for Learning
Throughout our lives, we develop strong connections to the places where we grow up, live and work. Our emotional and cognitive conceptions of these physical environments inform our understandings of ourselves, both as individuals and members of social groups (Knez, 2005). Outside of the home, students spend the greatest portion of their time in school (Gump, 1978; Rivlin & Weinstein, 1995). Here they continue to develop a sense of self, a measure of their own competence, and an increased understanding of their ability to relate to peers and adults. “[School] is a place with meaning for children’s images of themselves and for their image of learning the domains of ideas, facts, and other information”. Given its primacy in their cognitive, social, and emotional development, “school as place [warrants close] attention as a physical entity and continuing experience in children’s lives” (Rivlin & Weinstein, 1995, p. 252, 256, emphasis in original).
For several decades, scholars have studied children and adults’ emotional and cognitive relationships to place (Hart, 1979; Tuan, 1977; Moore, 1986; Hay, 1998). Researchers employ the term place “to foreground the meaning and/or emotional tie associated with physical environments” (Groat, 1995. p.2). Undifferentiated spaces become places as we come to understand and value them (Tuan, 1977). Seminal works by Relph (1976) and Canter (1977) define place as comprised of three interrelated components, including its features or appearance (the physical attributes), the observablAugust 3, 2007), and the meanings or symbols people derive from a given place (the conceptions). We come to know a place as we identify its physical features and parameters, the behaviors to be housed within it, and the conceptions people hold of these actions within this particular physical setting.
Across the literature, place signifies an extensive construct (Canter, 1997) with physical, geographical, architectural, historical, religious, social and psychological connotations (Knez, 2005). Architects, humanistic geographers, psychologists and sociologists each add their own particular nuances to the definition of place. Still, researchers across disciplines appear to share the common assumption that through attachment to places “a person acquires a sense of belonging and purpose which gives meaning to his or her life” (Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1995, p. 90).
The physical structure of a school building, as a primary place for learning, introduces children to forms and ideas outside the range of their experience. When planner/designers are willing “to make judgments based on the overall quality of a facility rather than [mere] adherence to myriad individual standards”, school buildings, as structures, begin to provoke thought and encourage learning just as powerfully as they protect occupants from the elements (Genevro, p. 10).
If they have done their job well, planners/designers have even considered the relationships between spaces within the building. The aim should be a synthesis of program maximizing a unity of form and purpose. If carefully conceived, the separate spaces will reinforce each other physically and aesthetically. They will contain the best of the past, make safe the present and be flexible enough to accommodate the future.
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