What visions of educational learning environments might be created if we could magically diminish the gaps of misunderstanding among perspectives on the school environment held by architects, planners, teachers, school administrators, the community, parents, and students? What if all these groups better understood the complexities involved in planning and designing educational facilities? With these questions serving as a guide, we have written a book to improve the knowledge base, skills levels, and communications practices among the various groups involved in planning, designing, constructing, using, and managing educational facilities. One of the objectives of this book is to introduce concepts that encourage people who plan and design physical learning environments to become more responsive to students' needs and community cultures. Another objective is to provide a reference work for educational leaders and architects. Finally, this book is developed as a textbook for students of educational leadership, school architecture, and educational planning.
We have organized the book's contents to include conceptual, descriptive, and applied aspects of developing educational facilities. Conceptualization includes school architecture, planning, programming, and design, while the descriptive segments contain information on capital outlay activities, school construction management, maintenance, and operations of school buildings. Legal and financial issues in developing educational facilities are described. One applications segment includes an example of planning a capital project and research regarding where students learn. Finally the applications "tool kit" includes a detailed procedure for forecasting student populations, with an accompanying CD containing student population forecasting programs, and an extensive exercise in strategic planning for school facilities. The research chapters incorporate statistical analysis relating design principles and characteristics to student outcomes, a case study on environmental quality in schools, and a Delphi study identifying plausible relationships among physical factors and measures of student, school, and school district success.
This work is offered as a guided step toward planning for improved educational learning environments around the world. Rich historical perspectives of school architecture and educational planning in the United States are provided from the perspectives of an architect and a planner. The rich heritage of school architecture and educational planning is explored in detail, with specific examples of architecture matched with its era, along with the names of planners and architects and examples of their work. The book emphasizes how evolving information technologies can be deployed to support more innovative school design. Not only are there examples of "how to" and "step by step procedures," every chapter invites the reader to think both "inside and outside the box." Practitioners and students are given a set of learning activities in each chapter to sharpen their perspectives on educational leadership, planning, programming, design, and architecture.

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