Education is always evolving, but over the past year, we’ve seen teachers, school leaders, and entire districts pivot like never before. They’ve had to rethink their instructional design and their technology, figure out how to deliver quality instruction in a virtual format, and find ways to support their students’ and staff’s mental health. They’ve also had to change the way they think about their physical spaces and their overall school design.
There’s no doubt that 2020 presented challenges for how we learn and interact in our physical environments, but there are several other educational trends affecting our physical learning spaces as well.
Below you’ll find six trends in education that have emerged over the last few years that could have an impact on school design, changing how — and where — your students learn.
1. School Leaders Are Taking a Holistic Approach to Healthy School Design
Over the past year, we’ve all been talking about how to make our school buildings safe — that’s a short-term strategy that had to be addressed during a global pandemic. But it brings to the forefront a greater goal: a long-term strategy that looks holistically at designing healthy school buildings.
What makes a building healthy? It starts with safety, but if we’re taking a comprehensive look, there are other considerations as well.
We can start by asking the following questions:
- What is your indoor air quality like?
- What products and furnishings are you putting in your buildings?
- Is the building sustainable (are lead or other contaminants leaching out of it)?
- Do you have a school nurse?
- Does the school nurse have adequate space to care for your school’s population?
- Is your environment welcoming (this includes furnishings, wall colors, visual clutter, and even classroom rules)?
- Do you have a space for students to decompress or cope with sensory issues?
- How do you accommodate your staff’s needs?
- How do you support your students’ and staff’s social-emotional well-being?
- How are you integrating natural, organic elements into the school day?
- How are you encouraging student choice and movement throughout the day?
How This Will Affect School Design
- Along with making sure they have adequate HVAC systems, school leaders will want to think about whether their learning spaces have enough natural light, have cohesive color palettes, and feature biophilic elements, as well as how they are supporting the social-emotional health of students and staff.
- School leaders may need to completely rethink how much space they need for their school nurse or isolation room.
- Classrooms could see a smaller number of traditional desks and more flexible seating options to allow for increased student choice.
- New school building designs could include calming or sensory rooms, and older buildings might convert an area for this purpose.
- Educational furnishings will be chosen not only for function and aesthetics but for their sustainability as well.
2. Schools Are Creating Wellness Centers or Calming Rooms
This is just one part of the holistic approach to building healthy schools. We’ve long known that students with sensory issues have a hard time focusing with outside stimulation and can benefit from personalized sensory input. However, school leaders and educators are realizing that some of these best practices can be beneficial for all students.
Just like all of us, sometimes students need a quiet place where they can go to deal with overwhelming emotions — a place where they can redirect their behavior and calm their minds and bodies.
A wellness center or calming room is a space where adults, including the school nurse or behavior specialist, can help students through whatever challenge they are facing at the moment. It’s a space that helps students destress, de-escalate their aggressive behaviors, and refocus so they are ready to learn.
How This Will Affect School Design
- Recognizing the importance of focusing on social-emotional health, school leaders will find ways to reutilize their spaces to create calming rooms.
- Comfortable seating, tactile surfaces, and furnishings that include sensory experiences will be key in these spaces. This could include active seating, such as wobble stools or rockers, or even something like the Classroom Cruiser.
- Educators can provide other sensory experiences through fidget toys, weighted blankets, swings, fiber-optic lighting, and dry-erase boards, which give students an outlet for drawing and writing.
- Biophilic elements will also be important, as they bring a calming sense of nature into indoor environments.
- For more ideas, explore a school calming room in 3D.
3. More Schools Are Looking at Adopting a Hybrid Campus Model
The COVID-19 pandemic brought swift and massive changes in how we deliver instruction, with schools alternating between in-person, hybrid, and virtual teaching models. This forced many districts to quickly move to 1:1 models, but it also brought the technology gap even more into the spotlight.
What many of us learned is that we can effectively deliver instruction this way, through the use of videos and synchronous and asynchronous virtual classrooms. We’ve already seen this model make its way into higher education, and with the new capabilities that many K–12 schools have acquired, we can expect this hybrid model to continue to grow in secondary schools and then eventually stretch into primary schools as well.
School campuses are going to become more flexible and adopt their own hybrid campus philosophies, which could take many shapes and forms. We’ll have more situations where a percentage of the students and staff are only attending school in person two or three times a week. We may see smaller groups coming together in the physical space more often for intervention services or additional support.
Because of this new model, we may be able to rethink the functionality of different spaces in our buildings and have more spaces that serve multiple purposes during different days of the week.
How This Will Affect School Design
- Technology tools and broadband access will be king. Modern learning environments must be equipped with collaborative technology, and tech leaders must be prepared to update as technology shifts.
- Physical spaces will need to flex for a multitude of uses. This means using flexible, adaptable furnishings that can be quickly rearranged for different group sizes and uses. These same furnishings will also need to be adaptable for hybrid instruction, where some learners are in the physical space and some are remote.
- Access to power will be critical. Student and staff devices will need to stay charged and ready at all times.
Are your learning spaces ready for the future?
Download this guide to find out how to arrange your learning environments for social distancing and what you can do to ensure your school spaces are future-proof.
4. We’re Seeing a Need for More Coaching and Less Direct Teaching
The United States will experience a teacher shortage in this country over the next 5 to 10 years for several reasons:
- We’re not filling open positions as fast as teachers are retiring.
- The pandemic has prompted severe teacher burnout.
- Many teachers are retiring or leaving the profession to protect their mental health.
- The complexity of what we’re asking teachers to do in their roles is only increasing, without the pay incentives to match.
Enter instructional coaches. While the teacher’s job may be to create course assets such as videos, students may be working with instructional coaches when they are doing the actual coursework.
While not certified in each curriculum area, coaches can help fill the gap that virtual learning often leaves between watching someone present on a topic and actually applying that knowledge in practice. Coaches can support students with their work and help them with any questions they may have.
This could open up a whole world of choice to students. We’ll be seeing accelerated conversations about course choice; students could perceivably be able to take any course they want because they’ll have virtual access. No matter how big a district is, their course catalog could get a lot bigger.
How This Will Affect School Design
- When our coursework becomes more customized, our spaces will as well. You might have 20–30% of kids that go hybrid, while some kids will want to collaborate onsite together. School spaces and our furnishings will need to be extremely flexible to manage that.
- We’ll see more schools expanding their libraries or their common spaces to incorporate centers of learning where students can gather and work with instructional coaches.
- We might even see districts looking beyond their campuses and utilizing empty office buildings to create learning centers and collaboration spaces. These spaces will be comfortable, welcoming, and outfitted with the latest technology to ensure students’ needs are met.
5. Students Are Gaining More Outdoor Learning Experiences
The benefits of being outdoors are no secret to educators; however, the logistics of holding classes outside have never seemed easy. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic saw many classes heading outdoors out of necessity. This mitigation tactic became increasingly popular as educators saw how well they could make it work with portable teaching tools and supplies.
This trend could lead to more districts taking outdoor learning a step further by creating expeditionary learning experiences and building closer connections with their surrounding area. More schools are already taking a community-based approach, with students learning through service projects within the community.
How This Will Affect School Design
- Now that the floodgates have opened on outdoor learning, more and more schools are creating permanent outdoor learning spaces and including outdoor learning in their school culture. They’re looking at using previously unused outdoor space, having some of their outdoor spaces pull double-duty, or building it into their master plans by creating courtyards within their building design.
- Outdoor learning spaces will require both permanent outdoor furnishings, as well as mobile materials, such as carts and whiteboards that can travel indoors and out.
- Lightweight, weather-resistant seating and work surfaces will be the norm, as kids can easily take their workspaces with them outdoors.
- Educators will also need to think about how to transport student supplies, either on carts or with individual caddies that students carry with them throughout the day.
- For outdoor inspiration, tour a permanent outdoor space and a space designed to quickly transition from indoors to outdoors.
The K–12 School’s Guide to Working with a Furniture Dealer
Learn how to turn a referendum into a beautiful learning space: make a plan, build a team, and avoid major pitfalls along the way.
6. More Schools Are Looking at All Spaces as Learning Spaces
Along with looking outdoors, school leaders are reassessing all the spaces inside their buildings and how they can be leveraged for learning. Over the past year, we saw gymnasiums, cafeterias, and even hallways being used as classrooms in order to meet social distancing requirements.
Hopefully, the need for social distancing is short term, but it begs the question: How could we be better at maximizing the use of space in our schools? We’re ready to think about using our hallways for small groups of kids to meet, repurposing our cafeterias for class time, or taking a look at how we use our lobby or other dead space better during the school day. We’ve found assets we didn’t even realize we had, and we’re ready to use these spaces more creatively.
How This Will Affect School Design
- As school leaders look to repurpose spaces for multiple uses throughout the day, they’re going to be looking at more flexible furniture solutions.
- Larger spaces will need tables that roll or even fold and nest so they can be moved aside, as well as seating that stacks or is easily portable. Tables will need to be easy to rearrange quickly to accommodate different size groups.
- Spaces such as the gymnasium or cafeteria will serve different purposes throughout the day, so different supplies will be needed. Storage that can easily move from one space to another or that doubles as a work surface will be essential.
- As most of these spaces won’t have permanent fixtures, portable whiteboards, supply carts, book carts, and student storage will help make them functional throughout the day.
- Explore a cafeteria reimagined as a flexible learning space.
Education Is Changing, and We’re the Change-Makers
We’re at a critical moment in history where we have the ability to make real changes that can influence the way education is delivered, perceived, and valued. We are all here because we want to make a difference in the lives of children, and there are opportunities available to us that we need to seize.
This means looking at how we can better support social-emotional learning, not only through what we teach but through our school environments. It means creating school spaces where students and staff feel safe and valued. It means rethinking the traditional school day and finding ways to offer kids opportunities that we never thought we could offer, and it means thinking about how we redesign our schools so that our learning environments are ready to be flexible and adapt not only in the near term but far into the future.
Feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities? Demco learning environment consultants can help assess your needs and provide recommendations that fit within your budget.
Liz Bowie
Latest posts by Liz Bowie (see all)
- 6 Educational Trends That Are Changing School Design - March 9, 2021
- 5 Tips for Designing Engaging Classrooms - February 19, 2021
- 3 Things You Hate About Your Learning Space (and How to Fix Them) - April 8, 2020
- Modern Learning Spaces: What the Research Tells Us - January 29, 2020
- Best Practices for Library Furniture and Space Design - May 20, 2019
Dr. Robert Dillon
Latest posts by Dr. Robert Dillon (see all)
- 6 Steps to Creating an Engaging Outdoor Classroom - March 29, 2021
- 6 Educational Trends That Are Changing School Design - March 9, 2021
- How to Manage Your Active Classroom - April 22, 2020
- Answers to Your Questions About Effective Library and Classroom Design - April 2, 2020
- How to Measure the Success of Your New Learning Space Design - March 3, 2020
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This site is alr but this vid sums it up
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ