Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of a sociohistorical perspective for the design of school buildings in the USA. Underscoring this overview are questions about how educational practice and research can provide insight to the interior spatial design of these buildings. To ground the concepts about education, practice, and interior spatial design of learning environments, Montessori, Central Park East Public School and Big Picture Learning Australia are proposed as exemplary educational programs. By providing these international educational programs, this chapter showcases how and why the design of schools can be imagined. To buttress the ideas promoted by these educational programs, Optimal Learning Theory (Csikszentmihalyi in, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper and Row, 1990), Situated Learning theory (Lave and Wenger in, Situated learning, Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Osmond’s Theory (Doubleday, 1966) on seating arrangements, sociopetal, and sociofugal are introduced. Building on theory and practice in the field of education and environmental psychology, this chapter provides recommendations for crafting the physical environment to encourage learning.
This chapter is based on Dyck’s extensive work in the USA as an educator and school designer. He will identify the five essential issues that designers must understand in order to craft innovative high school buildings.
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Dyck, J.A., Lippman, P.C. (2023). Creating Dynamic School Buildings that Activate the Learner and the Learning Process. In: Lippman, P.C., Matthews, E.A. (eds) Creating Dynamic Places for Learning. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8749-6_9
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