‘We
shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.’
Ex-Prime Minister Winston Churchill was talking about the rebuilding of the House of Commons after a wartime bombing raid. But today, another massive rebuilding is taking place.
The Department for Education and Skills’ Building Schools for the Future programme is creating a new secondary school every four days in 2005, and will be continuing for a decade. As a result, the eyes of the nation's teachers and students are very much on the design of schools. And it’s very clear that to make learning seductive, engaging, challenging and delightful, we need to do better than a mass of eau de Nil emulsion, some roller blind blackouts and a few notices telling students what they can't do!
What we do know is that design detail matters: the layout of furniture, the quality of light and sound, the shape of desks and comfort of chairs, the intensity of colour. A classroom is like a stage that can be ‘dressed’ for the ‘performance’ of its learners. And as their eyes wander from time to time around the walls, the best classrooms inspire them and lead them back to the task in hand. An English literature classroom should look very different from a design and technology one. A primary school room should change with the seasons, projects and years.
But the real bonus from talking about design is that students start to reflect on learning, and that meta-level reflection turns out to be a secret weapon. It accelerates learning and transforms them from consumers of learning to producers.
So have some fun designing your own school with our design-a-school game. Build your own learning environment. But remember, just by starting to talk about how to improve a learning environment you will light a fuse that will launch your own or your students’ improvement. The game is simple; the effect can be profound! Enjoy.
