#bcse

[kayrensu]

[anu-studies]

yall ever,,, do the opposite of hyperfixating? like just avoiding something you might enjoy at all costs just cause..... :)

[bfeuk-blog]

Senses working overtime

I was always a sceptic of the notion that external stimuli could affect the behaviour of people in a state of agitation until I read about Snow Patrol. Apparently landlords in Glasgow use this song to distract drunken yoboiks and break up fights:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOBs8dU4Pb8&ob=av2n

The anthemic qualities of the chorus are enough to stop people smashing bottles over each others heads. If music can pacify drunken adults, what are the chances of the right sights, sounds, smells, textures having a positive influence on the behaviour of pupils in the classroom? Even in the best performing schools teachers have to spend some time engaging in ‘crowd control’ rather than disseminating information. Boisterous and disruptive pupils are a fact of school life but can their instincts be minimised or transformed?

Certain members of the design & build community believe it can. A lot of research has been put into sensory perception by architecture practices that can be applied to the classroom. Many fundamentals such as acoustics, temperature, lighting and air quality have been micro analysed. One startling fact is that the audibility of speech delivered in a normal conversational style starts to break up at a distance of nine metres. Nearly every teacher has to project far more than nine metres to the back of the classroom, as a result most lose their voice in the first month on the job.

Architects that are dedicated to school building have been talking about effective classroom environments for a long time. We’ve fallen short of delivering great classrooms for many reasons – a lot of schools aren’t designed by dedicated specialists, the need to adhere to Building Bulletins has created the belief that classrooms can’t be changed or improved, delivering ‘optimum’ lighting, heating, ventilation and acoustics is seen as prohibitively expensive. There’s just a few – you can probably think of more.

The aspiration to build better classrooms remains, however, and this is the motivation behind the BCSE’s Decent School Standard campaign. The campaign endeavours to re-assert the case for better classroom design – citing the benchmarks for temperature, lighting and acoustics, and what the potential is for raising attainment when all the barriers of a poor environment are removed. Hopefully this will educate the wider design & build community and schools clients about the real practicalities of classroom design. With staff cutbacks at local authorities, new and inexperienced clients (hello Free Schools and converted Academies), and changes to the role and remit of enabling or delivery bodies (such as Design Council CABE and PfS) this help and guidance is needed more than ever. We wish the BCSE the best of luck with this campaign. If you’re reading this you’re already committed to building schools so pass the message on to those that really to learn more about building better classrooms.