Abstract
The aim of this study is to identify features of change in the recent design of school buildings in Iceland, and how they might affect teaching practices. Environmental and architectonic features characterising school buildings designed and built at the beginning of the 21st century are examined in light of challenges involving architecture, educational ideology, school policy and digital technology. The sample for the study consists of 20 schools located in four municipalities. Four of the school buildings were developed and built in this century, while the other 16 were designed in the 20th century. The design of all of the buildings wasexplored and reviewed by a multidisciplinary team. Data was collected by observations and photography at each school site, as well as by reviewing technical documents. The relationship between school design and school practices was studied through a questionnaire survey among all teachers, in order to find out whether teachers working in new environmentsdiffer from teachers in more traditional classroom settings. The results indicate a clear shift in the design of educational buildings. Flexibility, flow, openness and teamwork seem to guide recent school design. Clusters of classrooms or open spaces, transparent or movable boundaries, as well as shared spaces allowing for manifold interactions in flexible groupsseem to be replacing traditional classrooms along confining corridors. Teachers working in open classroom environments collaborate more often than their counterparts. Teaching practices are also characterised by more opportunities for pupils to choose between tasks and enjoy more variation regarding group division and workspace arrangements.
Highlights
The problem addressed in my research is the universal use of the word »school« to describe the obligatory lived daily experiences and reality of children in the United States
Students with a low socioeconomic status are funnelled into the prison system through what has been referred to as the »school-to-prison pipeline«
Data suggests that the adoption of zero-tolerance policies in school districts across the country and the increased police presence in schools coupled with the enactment of laws that mandate student referral to law enforcement authorities for various school code violations have contributed to a »significant increase« in the suspension and expulsion of students, as well as an increased involvement of students with a low socioeconomic status with the criminal justice system (Ward & Losen, 2003, p. 10)
Summary
»On a typical weekday morning between September and June some 35 million Americans kiss their loved ones goodbye, pick up their lunch pails and books, and leave to spend their day in a collection of enclosures known as elementary school classrooms. I argue that the compulsory schooling experience has the potential to impede some students from receiving an education that is beneficial to their development and growth as individuals, and can have negative implications for the future lives of students from impoverished urban and rural neighbourhoods. This is due to the fact that is the educational experience differentiated in order to school those students from poor families for working-class positions, but in the existing post-industrial U.S society, where production has moved abroad, this differentiation in the schooling experience exposes many poor students to the criminal justice system. With the decrease in the demand for physical labour in the United States, the increase in the flight of factory production abroad and the continuing development of the prison industrial complex used to house and control an increasingly unemployed poor sector of society, prisons have become a substitute for a factory job and school failure can be said to lead to incarceration for students with a low socioeconomic status
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