Designing Schools as Learning Centers

Introduction

There are many variables which need to be considered when rethinking education delivery for the 21^st century. Goldberg, in 1991, documented the role of environmental variables in motivating and assessing improved student performance. “This position is not a new or revolutionary claim, but a message that seems to need to be repeated because (schools) seem to just keep constructing buildings that merely reinforce an obsolete paradigm that will not prepare students for real world challenges. (Nair, 2011). However, designing schools as learning centers is more than just about restructuring the physical space of schools (Ripple, 2014; Nair, 2011; Rosenblum, S & Spark, B, 2002; Sabo, 1998; Goldberg, 1991; Chan, 1981).

Reevaluating education delivery will incorporate a range of topics as:

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  Learner’s comfort level- physically, mentally, and emotionally

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  Teacher-training courses in colleges and universities (C/U)

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  Teacher and school counselor professional development

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  School district administration’s attitudes towards delivery

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  School auxiliary personnel understanding of the importance of their roles

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  Community support and buy-in

Instead of centering focus on the actual purpose of education, the learner and learning, states and school districts seem to be fixed on the idea of learning requiring following a fixed pattern of education delivery, which occurs only in particular spaces and is delivered in a specific way. These are outmoded ideas of the industrial revolution. Spaces that allow for personalization, collaborative learning, self-directed learning, are environmentally conscious and connected to the broader community surrounding the school will be the schools of the future (Nair, 2011).

This chapter, focused on the educational system in the United States of America, considers how the educational process in America might be reconstructed to ensure the minds, hearts and bodies of learners are involved, and engaged, in the process of learning. According to David Gamberg, the superintendent of both the Southold Union Free School District and the Greenport Union Free School District, on Long Island, N.Y., school districts must do more than ‘efficiently manage the system or pits stakeholders against one another’ (Gamberg, 2012). Teachers must be effectively trained and supported in the classroom.

In response to an editorial, What Defines a Good School? (Gamberg, 2016), a teacher posted this comment: ‘we definitely need to watch our words and avoid infusing a “standardization” in the definition of “what makes a good school” for it is the students who ultimately define their school, not the adults who often strive to classify and define the culture and components’ to the detriment of the learners’. Following this student leadership theme, Chiquita Hall, an ISTE Student Technology Leadership Symposium member states, ‘I've been a student for almost thirteen years, and never did anyone ask me how I wanted a school to be.’ -- (Armstrong, 2002).

This chapter will describe how, in the American K through 14 education system, effective leadership and administration successfully aligns several often-competing goals (Leithwood, K., Seashore Louis, K., Anderson, S. & Wahlstrom, K, 2004). These goals include: