Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

Abstract

During the last century, the psychology of learning and educational philosophies changed significantly. The teacher-centered education and passive teaching methods were replaced by new pedagogical approaches and learning theories developed from knowledge acquisition to learning through participation. Considering these new viewpoints in pedagogy, different approaches to the design of educational spaces emerged accordingly. Furthermore, ICT advancements, safety and security, sustainability concerns, community engagement, etc. brought about new issues in the design and construction of educational spaces. Recent research about factors that affect students’ learning and teachers’ performance tries to complete or deepen the previous studies or focus on new aspects of educational environments and investigates effective factors in the design of school buildings. This study explores the major issues that are considered in the architectural design of educational spaces based on recent studies to answer the question: What are the major “design issues” for the architectural design of schools in the 21st century and how they can be addressed in the design? A total number of 145 empirical and experience-based articles about the architectural design of schools published after the year 2000 are reviewed and major “design issues” are extracted. “Design issue” is defined as “an area of concern that demands a design response” in the design process such as circulation, flexibility, safety, etc. Also, the required characteristics to address these issues in the design are extracted from the studied articles. Inductive content analysis is used as the data analysis method to analyze the articles. Each article is considered as a unit of analysis, and thorough latent analysis 10 major “design issues” are extracted as categories: Health and Comfort; Efficiency; Flexibility; Aesthetics; Safety and Security; Building Condition; Accessibility, School Size, Technology, Pedagogy and space.