Session Information
23 SES 05 C, Structural Conditions of Education
Paper Session
Contribution
After a long period of lethargy, Portuguese secondary education faced the evidence of the degradation and inadequacy of school facilities. In 2007, the Portuguese Ministry of Education launched the Secondary School Modernization Program (SMP), an ambitious rebuilding program of EUR 2.45bn for the first 205 schools. The SMP aims to develop a new school building model which is not a standard building, but a type of school that is part of a pedagogical project and is capable to integrate the changes in access to knowledge and the new types of learning. The process of rebuilding schools generates a complex process of dialogue and discussion between the school board, architects, teachers, pupils and the local community about the aesthetical and functional options and the educational and pedagogical implications. In this presentation, the authors will discuss the relations between the different social actors, expressed through their perceptions of the relations between knowledge, education and space. The ongoing study is focused on an evaluation of the main impacts of the SMP on education and of the perceptions the various involved actors.
The intervened schools are integrated, mainly, on urban spaces, but they vary significantly from city to city. The urban environment has also important implications on the way one thinks about the role played by the school institution in the urban context, on one hand, and the needs of the school when integrated on an urban space, on the other. This research question has to be related with the relations among the various involved agents, how they discuss and share the changes introduced in the school buildings and whether such changes have consequences on teaching and learning practices.
Literature demonstrates that school facilities influence teaching and learning processes and the enhancement of those facilities can improve educational performance and outcomes, however, the extent of that influence remains unclear (Cramer, 1976; Lackeney, 1994; Schneider, 2002; Higgins, 2005). The social actors also express different, sometimes contentious, perspectives on these the issues.
The rebuilding program has some learning principles, such as the library as the core of the school, the opening of school to the external community or the importance of informal learning and the decentralization of teaching and learning from the classroom (Parque Escolar, 2009). It is a challenge for the research to understand to what extent this has consequences on the learning models implemented in the schools and the role played by the relation patterns between the different social actors, stressing the level of participation of each one on the process of rebuilding schools, whereby discussion is part of the civic process (Jones, 2006). The research and particularly the dimension of the players’ relationships also allow an important discussion on the consequences that a political decision may have at the meso and micro level in education.
The SMP is pioneer in Portugal and its evaluation also requires reflection on the learning from other European initiatives, such as "Building Schools for the Future" in England, "Building our future" in Scotland, or "Inno Schools" in Finland.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bourdieu, P. (1979). La distinction: critique sociale du jugement. Paris : Editions de Minuit.
Cramer, R. (1976), Some effects of School Building Renovation on Pupil Attitudes and Behaviour in selected Junior High Schools. Georgia: University of Georgia.
Hertzberger, H. (2008). Space and Learning. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.
Higgins, S., Hall, E., Wall, K. & Woolner, P. (2005). The impact of school environments: a literature review. Newcastle: Design Council/ The Centre for Learning and Teaching.
Jenkins, P. & Forsyth, L. (ed) (2010). Architecture, participation and society. London & New York: Routledge.
Jones, P. (2006). “The Sociology of Architecture and the Politics of Building: The discursive construction of Ground Zero”. Sociology, 40, 549-565. Doi: 10.1177/003803850663674.
Lackeney, J. (1994), Educational facilities: the impact and role of the physical environment on teaching, learning and educational outcomes. Milwaukee: Wisconsin University, http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED466574.pdf 09/08/2010.
Parque Escolar (2009), Manual do Projecto de Arquitectura, http://www.parque-escolar.pt/pt-manual-projectos-arquitectura.php
Scheerens, J. (2005). Review and meta-analyses of school and teaching effectiveness. Twente: Department of Educational Organization and Management - University of Twente.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.