Building high quality schools for learners and communities

Citation

Uline, C.L. (2009), "Building high quality schools for learners and communities", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 47 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jea.2009.07447caa.002

Building high quality schools for learners and communities

Article Type: Introduction From: Journal of Educational Administration, Volume 47, Issue 3

As educators, researchers, policy makers, and public consider our schools’ capacity to ensure accountability and excellence in curriculum, instruction, and assessment for all students, rarely do they foreground the physical environment within which these activities take place. School buildings stand as a physical manifestation of the educational enterprise, and in some cases, they reflect persistent disparities in investment across locations and communities (BEST, 2006). Even as some challenge the relative impact of such investments on student achievement when compared with other factors, such as highly qualified teachers and effective educational leaders, common sense and mounting empirical evidence suggest that either/or decisions about where best to invest our resources may be shortsighted our schools’ capacity (Crampton, 2009). Rather, as we attempt to identify the conditions that foster excellence, it behooves us to consider the human, social, technical, and physical dimensions of our schools’ capacity (Crampton, 2009).

Significantly, the role of facilities in education is under-examined by the profession as a whole (Bosch, 2006). Further, the available research varies widely in quality and approach (Weinstein, 1979; Lemasters, 1997; McGuffey and Brown, 1978). This themed issue of the Journal of Educational Administration examines what we know about the relationship between educational facilities and students’ and teachers’ work and learning, as well as the role the public plays in shaping these learning places and joining the community of learners (Uline, 2000). Contributing authors span the fields of education, architecture, urban planning, sociology, and public policy bringing new questions, methodologies, and conceptualizations to the endeavor.

The article by Tak Cheung Chan explores the effects of anti-building decisions made by communities who, over the years, faced burgeoning enrollments, often in the face of diminished resources. In these situations, school officials in the USA have often chosen portable classrooms as temporary solutions. He investigated current research relating to the impact of portable classrooms on teachers and students with emphasis on attitude, behavior, achievement, morale, job satisfaction, and health and safety. His analysis of these studies indicates that the impact of portable classrooms on teaching and learning is not as negative as one might assume. Not surprisingly, Chan’s research also begs caution about the capacity of these classrooms to stand the test of time when they become more permanent fixtures, making implementation strategies, maintenance schedules, relocation plans, and plans for ultimate replacement essential.

Spending on school infrastructure is related to academic success as Faith E. Crampton explains. She advances a theoretical model that incorporates school infrastructure investments within the larger context of investment in other research- and theory-based variables related to student achievement. This model is operationalized through a multivariate statistical approach that captures multiple inputs and multiple outputs, the latter being various measures of student achievement, discovering that spending on school infrastructure is related to academic success especially when our investments are made in concert with investments in human and social capital.

Building on almost 20 years of research, Glen I. Earthman and Linda K. Lemasters contribute an article that investigates the relationship between school building conditions and student and teacher performance. Using their My Classroom Appraisal Protocol^©, they measure teacher perceptions and attitudes in buildings rated satisfactory as compared with those rated as unsatisfactory in an earlier study. Results of this research suggest that, although teachers may tend to exhibit persistence in the face of physical work conditions that have deleterious effects on their ability to teach, their moral and performance suffer. Indeed, it may be that highly qualified teachers eventually seek out high-quality teaching environments that support and celebrate their ongoing investment in the learning process.

Bruce Fuller and colleagues from the Center for Cities and Schools at the University of California-Berkeley study Los Angeles, California’s $27 billion school construction initiative, exploring the potential of new urban schools to improve the quality of education for students they serve. Their research reveals important nuances inherent in questions about the relationship of built learning environment to student and teacher performance, taking account of such factors as the in and out migration of students and teachers, the relative size of school buildings, new to old, and various other mechanisms through which new schools may contribute to teacher motivation and student engagement.

Post-occupancy evaluations (POE) have long served as tools for assessing building quality, as Roberts (2009) points out. Sheila Walbe Ornstein and colleagues from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo and the São Paulo State Department of Education, investigate POE as a method for assessing school building performance according to educational purposes. These researchers utilize a mixed methods approach, triangulating data from experts and building occupants, including students and community members. The research explores the effectiveness of POE methods in capturing user and expert assessments of overall building quality. Along with informing ongoing building maintenance and improvement programs, evaluation results also reduce the likelihood of repeated mistakes in subsequent school building designs.

In his article on the measurement of school facility conditions, sociologist Lance W. Roberts argues that research tools will be effective in exploring the relationship between facility conditions and learning outcomes to the degree that they take account of the educational purposes of schools. He compares more conventional engineering-based, property-management measures of school facility condition to those instruments that rate school facilities in terms of educational functions via the perceptions and attitudes of educators. The paper provides an empirical test of the relevance of various school facilities measures to educational purposes, illustrating that how we measure school facilities has important consequences for what is observed, thus influencing the relative usefulness of results to inform the management of school facilities toward achievement of their educational mission.

C. Kenneth Tanner challenges educational leaders, planners and designers to carefully consider the curriculum goals of a school’s educational program, as well as the instructional approaches to be employed within various learning spaces across any proposed school building. Since 1997, the University of Georgia’s School Design and Planning Laboratory has undertaken a program of research, studying the impact of the school’s physical environment on aspects of affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning. Relevant design principles, apparent within best practices and supported by research, provided a foundation for the study reported here. The research identified a number of design principles responsive to various modes of instruction and supportive of diverse learner needs. Further, the data reveal a significant relationship between these design principles and student achievement.

The link between school building quality and student outcomes through the mediating influence of school climate are examined by Cynthia L. Uline, Megan Tschannen-Moran, and Thomas DeVere Wolsey. Results of a recent study confirmed a link between the quality of school facilities and student achievement in both English and Mathematics. The current study, structured according to a collective, instrumental case study design, investigates two high poverty schools within the upper quartile of facilities quality, identified from an earlier quantitative study (Uline and Tschannen-Moran, 2008). The research describes how specific indicators of building quality support or impede a positive learning climate, revealing complex dynamics of how a school building’s physical properties are related to teaching and learning.

Findings from these studies underscore the complexities of these relationships between the physical environment of schools and the experiences of building occupants. We are reminded that schools exist within larger social, political, and fiscal circumstances, all of which influence decisions about how we will invest in the design, construction, and ongoing support and maintenance of our schools. These same dynamics also influence the ways we assess, or fail to assess, the outcomes of our decisions, both in terms of bricks and mortar and in terms of our larger educational intentions. Thus, students, teachers, parents, and communities may either enjoy learning places that maximize the unity of form and purpose or they may persevere within spaces that stand at odds with the goals of teaching, learning, and community health and well-being.

This field of study is just now coalescing. As professionals and researchers continue to discover each other across disciplines, they generate new understandings about the fit between how we learn and where we learn. School administrators hold a critical position within the public dynamic which directs the building of a school. These educational leaders will be challenged to negotiate the changes warranted by new ideas and understandings, ensuring reconciliation, continuity, and a smooth transition from past to present to future, a task made all the more difficult by current economic realities.

Cynthia L. Uline