The impact of a child’s environment on his or her learning has
been a widely studied issue. InformeDesign
(www.informedesign.com) has hundreds of research topics
specifically relating to the design of school environments.
Titles range from “Primary School Furniture Sized Incorrectly”
to “Noise Affects Pre-Reading Skills” to “Private Spaces in
Preschool Classrooms.” Most readers would agree that a child’s
physical environment should be carefully considered when
designing a school building. Those of us schooled in the ’60s
and ’70s, or even the ’80s and ’90s, may wonder how we survived
the asbestos-ridden, poorly ventilated and cramped classrooms of
our youth. Would we be smarter today if we were taught in the
transformative learning environments now found throughout the
country? What is the correlation between school design (not just
school environment) and intelligence quotient? I hope
researchers are tracking this data so that we can understand the
impact of good design on learning (hopefully, it will become