Continuity and conflict in school design: a case study from Building Schools for the Future

Abstract

In a bid to understand the relationship between school design and pedagogic practices, this article – which forms part of a larger project aimed at exploring students', teachers' and parents' perceptions of school spaces – focuses on how the design of a school funded as part of the Labour Government's Building Schools for the Future Programme (DfES 2003, 2004) came to fruition. We focus on how the strategic educational vision for this particular school was developed and how this vision was embedded in the final design. The analysis conducted allowed us to explore the process of design across different time periods. We found that motives can change depending on the aims and objectives at a particular point in time and that when the motives of different professional groupings differ at particular stages, this can cause tensions. This analysis has provided us with a stage model which we will use for analysing how educational visions were developed and how these were translated into material spaces in four other newly designed schools. The purpose of this is to provide a holistic understanding of how design processes impact on end-users' experiences of schooling.