Exploring Learning Spaces and Places: The Photo Interview.

Educational Facility Planner / Volume 45: Issues 1&2 www.cefpi.org O ver the last 40 years, researchers and educational facilities professionals have learned more about the ways in which the built environment of the school serves as a place where students construct their identities, where occupants create communities for learning, and where the outside community provides both context and support for the schools they build. In fact, students themselves may be best prepared to teach us about the ways learning spaces encourage or hinder their learning. And yet, how often do we ask? The present series of studies seeks to explore the relationship of the physical environment with school climate, achievement and identity development of students. The schools studied included buildings in the upper quartile of facility quality as well as buildings deemed to be substandard and, therefore, slated for significant renovations. In the latter schools, researchers collected data prior to start of renovations. Across the schools studied, students, along with their principals, teachers, parents and custodians were asked to tell their stories of the school environments within which they live and work. Student participants used both traditional and digital cameras to document how their school buildings influenced their learning, for good or bad. Background Having first established a statistically significant relationship between school building quality, school climate and achievement (Uline and Tschannen-Moran 2008), we proposed a Leadership-School Building Design model to explore how six characteristics of facility quality, including movement, aesthetics, play of light, flexible and responsive classrooms, elbow room and security interact with four aspects of school climate, including academic press, teacher professionalism, collegial leadership and community engagement to support students’ development and academic learning (see figure 1) (Uline, Tschannen-Moran, Wolsey and Linn 2010). These broad themes related to building quality and school climate emerged from the research as central to the interaction between the built environment and building occupants in high quality school buildings but also robust descriptors in the substandard schools. In substandard facilities, the themes were often described as absent qualities or as anticipated qualities that would be added and/or enhanced through the upcoming renovations. In all cases, students were observant and thoughtful in their approach to documenting the school. They noticed the strengths and limitations of the school buildExploring Learning Spaces and Places: