Global Lessons in School Design and Management: Insights from OECD Work on Physical Learning Environments

Abstrak / Ringkasan

School buildings are routinely treated as neutral infrastructure. This paper argues that they are not and proposes a framework for designing, governing and stewarding school estates as active components of pedagogy, equity and sustainability. The framework is informed by the OECD work, in particular from the Programme on Educational Building, the Centre for Effective Learning Environments and the Innovative Learning Environments project and is organised around four propositions.
1. Learning environments are ecosystems in which physical settings interact with students, educators, content, resources and organisation; changing one element without adjusting the others produces predictable failures;
2. Research on how people learn provides a usable vocabulary for specifying what environments should afford;
3. School estates require governance at portfolio scale, not project-by-project delivery, if equitable and sustainable provision is to be achieved; and,
4. Keeping the alignment between space, pedagogy, curriculum and accountability is fragile; it requires continuous stewardship rather than one-off achievement at project completion.
Seven evaluative dimensions, including pedagogical support, equity and accessibility, adaptability over time, safety, resilience, sustainability and whole-life value, and efficiency and deliverability, provide the criteria against which these decisions can be assessed. Each dimension captures a tension in the management of school buildings, making them visible.
The paper concludes that this knowledge can be embedded in the briefs, standards and funding frameworks that govern everyday decisions about school buildings, enabling holistic decisions that lead to more effective learning environments.

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