Sam Johnson leads the Pre-K-12 design group for BLDD Architects Inc., which has offices in Decatur, Bloomington, Champaign and Chicago.
W ould you recognize a school in the year 2040 if you saw it today? Probably not. Schools in 2040 will bear little resemblance to the buildings so familiar to us now. Sure, you’ve heard that before!
A report by the Educational Facilities Laboratories in 1968 stated: “In sum, there appear to be few convincing arguments for the conventional class, with its fixed 1:25 or 1:30 ratio.” But the 25-student classroom remains the basic building block of most current schools. That 25-student classroom made its debut at Boston’s Quincy Grammar School in 1848. It’s 162 years old and still going strong!
School facilities have always evolved in response to the issues facing school districts, and a number of current forces are driving facility evolution. The No Child Left Behind Act, which establishes that learning is no longer optional, requires schools to either meet the needs of individual students or face substantial consequences.
Technology is already changing educational delivery significantly, with the biggest changes still to come. As Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat shows, our society is changing in profound ways, and preparing future generations for the realities of a global society will require more educational program change. Issues of childhood obesity, consumption of natural resources, larger numbers of retirees and an historic low number of families with connections to school will all impact taxpayer support for school funding requests. These coupled with increasing ethnic diversity and students with limited English proficiency will all affect school design.
At a certain time, a “tipping point” will be reached where school districts across the country will reject what is currently in use as unresponsive to today’s educational program needs, and instead will pursue schools with more flexible, responsive academic environments, creating an “epidemic” of new school design.
In 1939, an ambitious district teamed with talented architects to redefine what a modern school should look like and created the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois. The design of this school was so compelling that it created an epidemic of copy cat schools that spread from coast to coast.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that all epidemics can be described using a bell curve. Starting with “innovators” and followed by “early adopters,” the curve begins its ascent. The “early majority” and “late majority” divide on either side of the top of the curve, and finally, as the bell curve flattens out again at the bottom, the “laggards.” With regard to school facility design, the “innovators” have been around for awhile and the “early adopters” currently have the stage.
As noted earlier, something is afoot, and when the epidemic tips, here’s what schools may look like in the year 2040:
Education will be decentralized and connected, meaning that learning will take place at a variety of venues connected through technology, with the school serving as the “home base.” Just as people work remotely across the world, education and learning will be available remotely. Pressure from an increasingly reluctant community and competition from other choices for schooling (including virtual schools) will force school buildings to do more with less, and those functions that can be handled more effectively through partnerships will be shed from the school building.
Service learning will move education off campus. Making education “real” positively affects a student’s ability to retain the subject matter. Education will be taught at a variety of “real world” venues, such as PE taught at park districts, history taught at museums, civics taught at government buildings, accounting taught at an accountant’s office, etc. Partnerships with corporations will create innovative educational environments for employees and their children. As they compete for the best talent worldwide, corporations will find that nothing attracts top talent like the ability to offer a superior education to their children.
These changes will be possible because of technology — the one issue connecting all of the others, not simply enabling but driving educational change.
By 2040, students will have lifelong digital learning portfolios. Rather than moving from one grade to another, students will be required to demonstrate mastery in the subject matter before moving, but can do so at their own pace using the modality that fits their learning style.
The biggest changes will occur in the interior academic environment, where the arrangement of 800- to 900-square-feet classrooms, located in rows on either side of a corridor, will be “blown up,” scattering several different learning settings throughout the facility. Students won’t go to rooms labeled by subject name; they will go to spaces labeled by the learning modality (e.g., the Project Room for project-based learning; the Team Room for small group work; the Break-Out Space for impromptu team, individual or peer tutoring work; the Lecture Room for instructor lectures; the Studio for creative work, etc.).
Instead of moving from classroom to classroom over evenly spaced blocks of time, students will find their assignment for the day when they arrive at school and choose how to accomplish the work according to the learning modality they find the most comfortable and effective.
Through technology, their progress will be evaluated at the end of each day, and the next day’s assignments will be developed and ready for them when they next arrive at school. The environment will look and feel like a conference center-meets-mall with a lobby/public space collecting students before they opt for an available choice for learning that borders the public space. The interior environment will be much more collegial, much less institutional, recognizing the importance of student comfort in the learning process.
Another significant change will occur as a result of globalization, the changing roles and avocations that will emerge by 2040, and the education and training necessary to perform these roles.
In A Whole New Mind — Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Daniel Pink noted: “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.” Significant value will be placed on a person’s ability to think creatively, to solve problems and to see the big picture. Academic environments will respond by incorporating environments where architects and artists hone their creative abilities: the studio. In addition to being a space large enough to support the mess of iteration and reiteration so necessary to the creative process, “studio” time will be much longer than today’s typical class period, as required for the imagination to heat up, fire and ultimately “build” ideas.
The need to reduce fossil fuel consumption will reverse the trend of student busing, encouraging the redevelopment of neighborhood schools with a goal of livable, walkable communities. Societal changes will be incorporated in school facility design, such as community gardens for locally grown produce that will serve both as an educational venue and community resource, reconnecting the broader community with the school.
Regarding other natural resource consumption, schools in 2040 will be carbon neutral, consuming only the energy created on site. By 2040, almost everyone will understand that the existing supply of natural resources cannot possibly meet the demand of current first-world nations. Global competition will create a reduction in disposable income for the average American, redefining what it means to be prosperous. That will spur development of new industries and products that require fewer natural resources to produce less expensive goods, allowing society to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
Issues of sustainability and environmental wellness will be completely woven into the learning culture of the school. In fact, students will be enlisted to address environmental issues at a much earlier age. Accordingly, schools will be constructed with locally grown or procured materials, materials that have been recycled or rapidly renewable materials, and constructed on site so as to minimize the environmental impact.
The obesity epidemic also will drive the redevelopment of educational programs. Physical education will shift focus from competitive sports to personal wellness. Moving from service use to educational use, the cafeteria will become a classroom, and the physical wellness coach, the nurse, the head chef, the community gardens operator and the health coach will develop an integrated curriculum for personal wellness. Assessments will be made at on-site health clinics that will also provide primary pediatric care.
Although school facility design has been fairly resistant to change over the years, new realities will force us to remove the blinders of tradition and to develop the responsive school designs needed to support new educational programs. Choices for education will increase greatly, and public schools will need to evolve to compete.
Teachers in 2040 will ‘facilitate’ learning
by Linda Marrs-Morford
Linda Marrs-Morford is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Administration at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston.
I t is hard to predict what public education will look like in 40 years due to the rapid changes in technology and the global economy, but one thing is for sure — it will be different. It has to be!
Relying on Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat predictions, as the world continues to get flatter, educators will be challenged with preparing graduates to compete and cooperate with others around the world. Curriculum will be aligned with international standards that focus on global knowledge and skills. The schoolhouse will more than likely be online with students enrolled from all over the world.
What does this mean for the future educator? Teachers will no longer be the “sage on the stage.” They will become facilitators of learning.
Every child will have an individual education plan. Technology will enable each child to progress through the curriculum at his/her own pace.
Future teachers will be much better prepared to diagnose and provide interventions based on the needs of the specific child.
For these “new world educators,” teaching tools will be very different. Gone will be the traditional textbooks and workbooks. Teachers will create their own learning materials for each child. As a result, educators of the future must be technologically savvy and media literate.
But we must be cautious!
Although technology will enable much of the education program to be online, there will still be a need for face-to-face interactions to develop the social/emotional knowledge, skills and dispositions of students.
Even in the future, we all have to get along with each other!
Technology’s influence will shape future schools
by Roger Eddy
Roger Eddy is superintendent of Hutsonville CUSD 1 and a four-term member of the Illinois House of Representatives for the 109th District.
A s a veteran of 30 years in public education in various positions, I have had the opportunity to witness the evolution of policy and practice in our public schools from a front row seat. I’ve been a classroom teacher, coach, high school principal and a Pre-K-12th grade district superintendent for the past 14 years, as well as having served four terms as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives.
It has been a unique perspective for which I am thankful.
During this time, various proposals have emerged as to how to best improve teaching and learning for our children and our future. Some proposals have been successful and most well-intentioned, although some of the proposals are clearly self-serving, especially those we see from time to time in the General Assembly.
The bottom line is that these forces all work together in a manner that influences change over time. The reality is that political winds are at least a part of what catches the sails that eventually chart the course of public education. To have had the chance to mix policy with practice leads me to my predictions of what the next 30 years might bring.
School organization
At the secondary level, it is likely that what we now know as 11th and 12th grade will become more specialized for students with pre-vocational or job training grade level options. The integration and articulation of the community colleges will be an important aspect of a Pre-K-16 approach.
Pre-kindergarten programs will be accepted as a traditional part of the public education continuum for all students. Research regarding the value of early intervention and the continued success of pre-kindergarten programs will simply overwhelm any remaining opposition.
Administrator’s job changes
Administrative positions, especially at the building level, will have fully evolved into true roles of instructional leaders. Teachers and administrators will be held to a high standard of accountability based on student achievement contained within a growth-model assessment protocol.
The assessment system will be aligned into a well-established, rigorous common core curriculum. The entire accountability program will be driven by a data collection and management system that will allow teachers, parents, administrators and the wider community to access important student performance and demographic data that will be used to drive improvement in student achievement.
Technology
Technology could provide the area of greatest change in the next 30 years. Clearly, if anyone would have attempted to predict the changes in technology we have seen in the last 30 years and the effect of those changes on education and our society, those predictions would have vastly underestimated reality. The same thing will happen in the next 30 years.
I envision a classroom truly without walls. Opportunities for virtual learning will abound. “Traditional” classrooms as we know them today will contain learning stations where the desktops used by students will resemble the desktop of today’s computer.
A component of the learning station will be a removable tablet personal computer and communications device that will be connected to the Internet and all textbooks will be contained within the device or on a Web server.
Interaction with parents, teachers and the community will take place via websites and technology-driven communication devices that will make it easy to communicate with everyone within seconds. Fiber optics will replace most cables and wireless communication will be ubiquitous.
Our challenge in the future will be similar to our challenge now: to use the technologies of the future to enhance student performance and improve the quality of education for all.