The relevance of innovative school architecture for school principals

ABSTRACT

In many cases, innovative forms of learning require innovative concepts of using space in school. However, so far there has been a lack of research concerning the perspectives of school principals as important stakeholders in the adoption of alternative school architecture. The present study examines the importance of alternative school architecture in a sample of 1164 principals (56% females, mean-age 52.7 years) in Austria. An online questionnaire was conducted, containing questions about the school building, innovative forms of learning, and principals’ level of information, perceptions, and thoughts on the relevance of school architecture, as well as their motivation and self-efficacy. Results showed that principals are aware of the advantages of certain architectural elements, although these elements have been implemented in only a few schools. A high proportion of respondents report a lack of information about configurations of space that go beyond the traditional corridor-scheme. We conclude that although principals are in general open for the alternative configuration of space further efforts have to be made to overcome the obstacles that prevent principals from launching new concepts of using space, which are a lack of competitive resources and knowledge as well as an inadequate professional network.

KEYWORDS:

• School architecture
• innovative learning arrangements
• configuration of school space
• innovative forms of learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alfred Schabmann is Professor of Pedagogics and Didactics at the Faculty of Human Science at the University of Cologne. His research interests are reading/spelling achievement, learning/intellectual disabilities, mentoring and psychology of chronic diseases.

Vera Popper was a research assistant at the University of Vienna from 2008 to 2012. Her research interests are lifelong learning, evaluation research and intervention. Currently, she works as a self-employed psychologist, coach and organisational consultant.

Barbara Schmidt is a research assistant at the Faculty of Human Science at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research interests are reading achievement, learning disabilities, hearing impairment and instruction methods.

Christian Kühn is Professor of Building Theory at the Vienna University of Technology. His research interests are the history and theory of architecture and building theory with an emphasis on school and educational buildings. He was also commissioner for the Austrian contribution to the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice 2014.

Ulrike Pitro is a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Architecture and Design. She also works as an architect in Vienna. Her research interests are architecture for education as well as rules and regulations in architecture.

Christiane Spiel is Professor of Bildung-Psychology and Evaluation at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna. She has been chair and member of various international advisory and editorial boards, for example, President of the European Society for Developmental Psychology and of the Austrian Psychology Association. Her research interests are lifelong learning, school bullying, social relations in multicultural schools, gender stereotypes in the educational system, evaluation research, and intervention and implementation research.

Notes

1. For the purpose of our research, we defined ‘innovative learning arrangements’ in a very general way as any spatial setting that goes beyond the well-established model of corridor and classroom and the associated usage; that is, teacher-centred instruction supported by a dominant position of the teacher at a blackboard on one side of the classroom. As a second aspect, the duality of classroom and corridor in this model assigns all learning activities to the classroom, while the corridor is merely a means of transportation.

2. This is the case for core curricula. In fact, teachers have free reign with regard to how to implement the core curricula (e.g. whether they choose to implement IL).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Austrian Ministry of Education.