Do Fewer Walls Make For Better Schools? - Why Finland Is Embracing Open-Plan School Design

I remember seeing a documentary comparing UK schools to Finnish schools a while back. The Finns seem to have adopted a more open and flexible education system that seems to have strong support from teachers and administrators as well as strong results. As a former educator from the US, I might suggest that the failure of open plan schools stems from an education community inculcated and indoctrinated in a boxy, rigid education system.

Anecdotally, though... I went to elementary school in a building built to be a high school in the early 1910s. It was a large brick box with doorlined hallways -- a lot of private space and almost zero useful public space. It was fine. It suited the teachers' standards and spoke to the rote lecture-response system in place. At the same time, though, the building itself only lent itself to that single education style.

My high school was an open plan building built in the 1970s. It was meant to facilitate more of a project based learning system and in general served that purpose as the teachers and administrators saw fit. The thing that was really differentiated in this building was the bending of the concept of private/public space. There were no doors for classrooms and the plan revolved around useful public spaces. I would go so far as to say that it ended up being more of a hybrid system as teachers that preferred the old way kept the old way in place and had spaces to do so. Those that saw a stronger benefit to public spaces and project/team based learning used those spaces as they saw fit. The building allowed flexibility.

There also wasn't much of a problem as far as noise went. There were architectural treatments that served as excellent solutions. I'm fact, the only real problem the building had was unevenness of HVAC. One area would be too hot while another would be too cold.

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