Extract

ABSTRACT: The educational process in schools involves many activities that ultimately aim at testing
students’ motivation, knowledge assimilation, academic performance, and teachers’ productivity. How
these activities are accommodated in a responsive environment is a critical issue that deserves special
attention especially from users’ perspective. This paper analyzes emerging understandings of learning
environments .Reactions of teachers and students to classroom and cluster prototypes, among other
aspects, against a number of spatial requirements and educational objectives are analyzed and
discussed based on two mechanisms. The first is a comparative analysis of reactions of teachers from
three elementary schools within Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District. The second part is a case
study of a pre-design phase undertaken for redesigning some buildings of North Carolina School of the
Arts. The results of this investigation support the assumption on how the school environment has a
direct impact on the way in which teaching and learning takes place. A conclusion envisioning the need
for going beyond adopting prescriptive measures to address the quality of the learning of environment
is conceived by highlighting the need to utilize knowledge generated from research findings into school
design process, to pursue active roles in sensitizing users about the value of the school environment in
reaching the desired academic performance while increasing teachers’ productivity.

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