Current Design Process and Applications

Over the past eight years working with schools and interacting with a wide variety of professional and lay audiences on school design, we've made several modifications in the design process and attributes of new designs for schools. This section describes the present design process and typical design results. The current design process for New Designs for Learning is shown in Exhibit 1. Each of the elements will be briefly described, highlighting changes made over the past eight years. The meaning and results of working with each element will be illustrated by drawing on applications of the design process to schools in the United States and internationally. It is assumed that the design process for a particular school will be guided by a design group which is broadly representative of the stakeholders in the school (for example, parents, students, school staff, business and industry, school board/trustees, and community-based organizations).

Learning Context
Attention to the learning context specifically recognizes and reinforces the need to tailor the design of a school to its unique situation. During this element of the design process, the focus is on the unique assets, problems, opportunities, and aspirations of the school under consideration. In general, assets are features about the school that are working and which should be retained in the new design; problems are features that are not working and which need to be fixed; opportunities are features that cannot be taken advantage of with the way the school is currently operating; and aspirations are the future hopes and dreams for the school.

Unique assets might include: (a) qualities of faculty-student relationships, (b) strong support by parents, or (c) existing school facilities. Unique problems might involve: (a) lack of success by certain groups of students, (b) little feeling of community among students and staff, or (c) isolation of the various school subjects--one from the other. Unique opportunities might be: (a) developing partnerships with the community or other educational institutions, (b) taking advantage of new learning technology, or (c) planning an entirely new high school facility. Unique aspirations might include: (a) addressing new high school graduation requirements in the form of learning expectations, (b) significantly increasing access to more equitable and culturally sensitive learning opportunities, or (c) contextualizing learning by more closely relating it to real-life applications. The product of the learning context element of the design process is usually a set of design criteria, which serves to guide and monitor the remaining elements of the design process.[1]

Learning Audience
The learning audience is a new element in the design process and refers to who the school is to serve. Originally, we thought of the school as only serving school-age youth. However, new schools may need to serve a broader group, early childhood through adults. The learning audience may also include all of the school staff--they must be continuous learners for new designs to move into place (see the later section, "Learning Staff"). Being clear about the audience for the school and including attention to adults can have a major impact on the school's organization, staffing, partnerships, technology, and facilities.

Learning Signature
The learning signature focuses on what is to be special and unique about the school under design. While most school-planning processes include consideration of mission, vision, values, and logo, these components are rarely linked together in a compelling and highly meaningful signature for the school. The literature on effective schools concludes that giving a school a special focus provides coherence, consistency, and spirit to the school, and thereby adds to the quality of the learning experience and accomplishments. If the learning signature is real and meaningful, you should be able to ask anyone involved in the school--teacher, student, parent, custodian, or secretary --what is special about the school and get the same basic answer. Usually, school design groups are asked to develop a symbol, picture, phrase, story, or object that communicates clearly what will be special about the school they are designing. A shared signature for the school is collectively developed from personal signatures through a process of sharing, reflection, compromise, and consensus-seeking. A "social gathering place" became the learning signature for a new K-12 school involving a partnership of nine districts aiming at model integration of students from diverse social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. See Exhibit 2 for an illustration of a learning signature for the Lifework Learning Center.

Learning Expectations
Learning expectations address what is promised in terms of learning results or outcomes from the school being planned. The list of learning expectations represents the students' accomplishments as promised by the school in exchange for the public's investment in teaching and learning--often on the order of $70,000 to $100,000 per student and about 2,400 days of learning for a typical high school graduate. Learning expectations include statements such as "self-directed learner," "collaborative producer," and "critical thinker." See Exhibit 3 as an illustration of new designs for learning expectations for the Chetek Area Schools.

Learning Process
Typically, the learning process consists of design specifications for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. In implementing this process, we emphasized moving from learning expectations directly to identification of learning products that would demonstrate that the learning expectations have been achieved. Additionally, we focused on the identification and design of learning projects that would result in the desired learning products. These learning projects, which consist of learning events or activities, naturally and strategically link assessment, curriculum, and instruction--assessment is continuous, curriculum is interdisciplinary, and instruction is "construction" with learners as active participants building their own personal knowledge. With this strategy, subject areas are necessarily and naturally integrated, learning inside the school and in the community are both valued and closely coordinated, and learning is viewed as a continuous process all through early childhood and youth requiring seamless transitions from pre-school through elementary, middle, high, and postsecondary school.

Learning Organization
Attention to the learning organization element results in decisions about how to organize the time schedule, learners, staff, learning process, decision-making, technology, and learning settings in order to best support the learning process described above. The focus of the learning organization element of the design process is on how to organize these elements. In developing specifications for a learning organization, we typically divide a larger design group into small groups of four or five individuals, and have each group work on developing the specifications for one aspect of organization (for example, time, students, or technology). We ask each group to develop a list of areas of agreement as well as issues for further discussion and information gathering. Each sub-group then presents to the whole design group and, through discussion, issues are resolved or given further study and a coherent and mutually reinforcing set of organizational attributes is eventually selected. A key attribute of the organization for New Designs schools is small size.[2] The idea is to start with the individual student with supporting facilities and technology (in this case, an individual work station and a personal, telecommunication-equipped computer) and then build to small groups of about five students with their own workgroup areas. About 20 small groups are located together in a "family" space of approximately 100 students with production and resource facilities and a small group of teachers representing diverse subject matter areas. Four of the families are then combined into a neighborhood of about 400 students--essentially, a stand-alone school. If the school must be larger, it is subdivided into as many neighborhoods as necessary to accommodate all of the students, but each neighborhood operates fairly autonomously.

Typical learning organization specifications include the following types of statements: (a) organize learning time to provide just-in-time flexibility to the learning process, (b) organize staff to encourage integration of subject areas, (c) organize learners to support individual and cooperative group learning, and (d) organize learning settings to closely link school-based and community-based learning.

Learning Partnerships
The learning partnerships element of the design process focuses on who needs to be involved in making the learning organization and learning process work to achieve the learning expectations. An important consideration involving learning partnerships is identifying the many partners, both internal and external, that are needed. For example, the list of partners for a K-12 school included: families, business and industry, government, churches, community-based organizations and agencies, higher education institutions, school staff, students, alumni, senior citizens, funding sources (that is, foundations), parent teacher associations, neighboring schools, and a regional cooperative service agency. It is also important to attend to the desired characteristics of the partners and the various resources and services that might be shared. This sharing of resources is a two-way process that includes not only external partners providing resources and services to the school, but also includes the school providing resources and services to the external partners.

Schools are encouraged to form a portfolio of strategic alliances, some formal and others informal, some long-term and others short-term, to support the learning process and organization. It is imperative to make the partnerships real, and not just paper transactions. Partners must be given recognition and voice in the learning experience. Extra funds may be needed for legal advice and extensive meetings to address the legal features of partnerships to everyone's satisfaction. Examples of significant learning partnerships include: (a) jointly scheduling and maintaining a school auditorium with community organizations and agencies, (b) placing the school site on the grounds of a state agency with shared staffing, learning settings, and heating/cooling services, (c) contracting out the food service to community businesses with the expectation of providing work-based learning opportunities for students, and (d) sharing school facilities with businesses for training purposes during afternoons, evenings, and weekends.

Learning Staff and Staff Development
It is important to consider the make-up of the learning staff and their desired features. Learning staff should be thought about in terms of learning teams as well as individuals. With increased emphasis on learning projects and informal learning in New Designs schools, students are emerging as an important component of the learning staff. And, with stronger and more intense partnerships, the partners are increasingly being viewed as a part of the learning staff. For example, with the Chetek Area Schools the categories of learning staff included: (1) school staff (that is, administrators, teachers, office, and support services); (2) paraprofessionals, aids, volunteers, and mentors; (3) families; and (4) students.

Staff development should focus on current and future needs, as well as consideration of who is in the best position to provide effective staff training. Schools must invest in the needed staff development to make a New Designs school work effectively. Some New Designs sites have included a three-year professional development plan for teachers coinciding with the design and building of the new school environment and unique professional development settings within the school. Others have created several small professional development schools within their district for staff to "rotate" into in order to experience teaching in a New Designs school.

Learning Environment
The learning environment is frequently the point at which school design groups choose to start their design process. We discourage this approach, because it is important to be clear about the desired features of the learning experience as a basis for designing a supporting learning environment. The learning environment, which includes decisions about technology, equipment, and facilities, extends well beyond the school building to include all of the learning settings used by learners (for example, workplace, home, public library, and community). Smaller learning environments placed strategically around the community optimize the use of partnerships. The close blending of school and community ensures that learning is rigorous and relevant. A learning environment networked by computers provides each learner with essentially her or his own school. Designing the learning environment begins with a detailed review of the learning process, organization, partnerships, and staffing, and then selecting the best supporting environment. See Exhibits 4, 5, and 6 for illustrations of new designs for learning environments at the School of Environmental Studies, Kapolei High School, and Downtown School.

Learning Celebration
Learning celebration is a new element in the design process and was added to address the need to align incentives and recognition of progress and success in moving toward New Designs specifications. Many of our traditional learning celebrations need to be revised to communicate and reinforce the changes in learning and the operation of schools being recommended by New Designs. Annual graduation ceremonies, quarterly competitive grades, and sports trophies may not be aligned with learning expectations that focus on preparing for lifelong learning; the challenges of work, family, community, and personal responsibilities; high expectations for all learners; and productively working together as a learning community. Learning celebrations should reinforce the design specifications for all elements of the design process, particularly the learning expectations and learning signature. Learning celebrations might include: displays of student learning products located all through the school and in many places in the community, closed circuit television screens around the school showing the names and contributions of all the learning partnerships working on a given day, and teams of students being recognized by community-based organizations for their solutions to important community problems.

Learning Finance
The learning finance element of the design process has broadened from a focus limited to learning cost in the original New Designs process. Learning finance now includes costs and revenues for building and operating a new or restructured school. Our goal has remained to bring the New Designs school into place and to operate it for no more cost than an average existing school. Cost considerations often involve a trade-off among technology, staffing, and partnerships. The focus on revenue often leads to exploring new sources of revenue for the school as a partner in social and economic development of a community. Working on the learning finance element has led to developing a new financial portfolio for the school and a plan for securing needed community awareness and political support.

Learning Accountability
Learning accountability is also a new element in the design process and addresses the need to take very seriously the recommendations and commitments of a school's stakeholders in setting forth new designs for schools. It ensures that there will be a reporting back on how the implementation is progressing. The design attributes for accountability describe who is responsible and when and how reporting back will occur. The focus of accountability should tie directly back to the design criteria developed in the learning context element at the beginning of the design-down process and then to the design attributes developed in response to each of the other design elements. School staff are usually assigned the responsibility of developing measures or indicators of accomplishment that are acceptable to the policy-making group, typically the school board in a public school.

Summary
The design process for New Designs for Learning has emerged from research and best practices as well as the experience of working with several schools across the United States and in other countries. No doubt, it will continue to change as we gain more experience and as changes occur in the learning context. While the New Designs process is presented in a very linear fashion, focusing on the most important questions first, there is also a need to move upwards and across all elements in the design process in order to gain the careful alignment needed for high quality and efficiency.

[1]See the end of the CenterPoint for a brief description of each of the schools used to illustrate design elements and attributes along with contact information.

[2]The ideas about organizing the learning setting which follow were developed by Bruce Hilk, and educational planner and architect, in response to the other design attributes originally set forth in New Designs for the Comprehensive High School.