Essentials Magazine Essentials Spring 2019 | Page 17

S
chool architects indicate
that their designs really
impact the learning
environment. But
how do we know that
they do? Does design
improve learning, or do
they merely impact the built
environment? Sure, a beautiful
new structure can provide a facelift
in a community, but until recent-
ly the scholarly research was void
of evidence that design impacted
student engagement. A mixed-meth-
ods scholarly study was conducted,
with the approval of The University
of Texas at Tyler, to determine what
impact two new schools, both de-
signed by VLK Architects, had on
student engagement.
A Unique Opportunity
VLK Architects had the unique
opportunity to design two replacement
elementary schools in the Houston area
around the same time. Both schools were
designed on the existing site, and the
attendance boundaries of the schools re-
mained intact. Therefore, the same staff,
and the same students were moved from
the existing school to the replacement
school. Although the academic achieve-
ment levels in both schools were already
high, the team wanted to study the
impacts of the new designs on student en-
gagement. In order to fully comprehend
the impact of the new environments, the
researchers gathered the perceptions of
students via focus groups, and teachers,
via an online survey. A conceptual frame-
work of student engagement (Schlechty,
2001), with a deep understanding of the
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