Creating Smaller Learning Communities
By: Jeffrey A. Lackney
Imagine a school where students actually enjoy spending a good part of their day in—a school setting where they experience the pleasure of learning, feel connected to one another, and feel safe, protected and comfortable.
Chances are, these students are experiencing what educators have come to refer to as a “smaller learning community.” There is an enormous interest and rapid growth in the creation of smaller school environments in the United States, fueled by overwhelming evidence that smaller schools can have a positive influence not only on the social climate of a school, but also the academic achievement of students.
Research conducted on school size over the past 40 years, and particularly over the past 15 years, is quite conclusive regarding the positive relationship between smaller school sizes and a variety of school outcomes. Student participation in school activities and extracurricular activities, student satisfaction with school, and future community employment have all been found to be greater in small schools relative to large schools.
Further, a growing body of research shows that smaller schools can have a positive influence on achievement, school climate and student connectedness, which has been shown to reduce disciplinary problems, incidents of vandalism, truancy, drug use, and drop-out rates. Taken together, it is difficult to argue with the influence smaller schools can have on students.
School design has a critical role to play, as well, in light of small schools research. What constitutes a smaller school, its optimal size and structure is at this point an open question. The school designs that are developed for middle schools (namely, the “house plan,” where a small family of students and their teachers reside) serve as the core model for what is now called the “neighborhood” plan for the learning “community.” The goal is to break down the scale of the school organization into manageable groups of learners to create a natural sense of belonging, connectedness and caring.
There is more to the design of a small school than simply breaking students up into smaller units, though.
The school building as a whole should symbolize in physical form the philosophy of smallness, of individual caring, support and concern for the individual learner. Imagine inviting home-like entrances to each house that are inviting for both students and parents. Imagine a welcoming main community entrance that leads to a public gathering space that provides large groups a place to come together in formal meetings. Corridors are transformed into “walkable streets” that provide not only circulation, but also offer places to comfortably meet and socialize. Smaller school buildings, whether by design or due to site limitations, may be designed to eliminate corridors all together, creating more intimate settings off connecting classrooms to central gathering spaces. Finally, “streets” lead to “neighborhoods” that comprise a smaller group of classroom spaces surrounding a variety of learning and support spaces shared in common with an interdisciplinary team of teachers.
School design also must consider time management as well as space; teachers need additional time to collaboratively plan, and learners of all ages can benefit from larger blocks of uninterrupted time to learn in different modalities.
Although there will always be the continued need for classroom spaces for direct instruction of concepts, content and skills, smaller learning communities, being more collaborative environments, require additional spaces than conventional self-contained classroom settings.
Students need adequate personalized workspace that provides a sense of ownership and teaches responsibility for one’s own learning. Teachers require team spaces with adjacent material preparation areas and meeting space that encourages team teaching, mentoring and collaboration. Dedicated presentation spaces are needed for individuals and teams to demonstrate their learning and share knowledge acquired with the larger learning community. Process galleries and studio space allow for the display of ongoing projects to showcase concept development. Project space is necessary that provides a variety of work surfaces, storage and access to technology to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork. A home base is necessary for gathering of learners and teachers to seek assistance and resources or hold group discussions. Finally, informal, non-classroom, learning spaces such as study spaces, lounges and outdoor spaces provide critically necessary areas for socializing and serendipitous meetings that can foster creative thought and solutions to problems.
Some schools even have a collaboration incubator, an idea generation space to support creativity, teamwork and prototyping of concepts that can also encourage the involvement of local employers in the development of projects.
Despite the research, a large outdated school building often becomes an enormous obstacle to creating effective autonomous smaller learning communities. When building new, school buildings can be designed to accommodate smaller groupings of students in a campus-like arrangement.
A number of facility strategies can be examined including restructuring larger school buildings into a number of “schools-within-a-school.”
In existing larger schools, an important ingredient of success that is emerging from the research is that each school is as autonomous as possible, having its own distinct administrative entity and academic theme.
Other models that exist for breaking down the scale of existing schools that are emerging include vertical houses, ninth-grade houses, and special curriculum houses. The vertical house plan assigns students grades 9-12 students and their teachers to a single house. The ninth-grade house plan provides an environment for ninth graders to ease the transition into high school. The special curriculum house plan organizes students into houses based on special interests or needs.
Fortunately, we don’t have to imagine what small schools might look like. There are numerous examples across the country and, in fact, across the world, that are successfully taking full advantage of these small school principles.
Jeffery A. Lackney, PhD, AIA, REFP, is an architect and environmental psychologist dedicated to the education, research and practice of school design.
