Teachers' construction of space and place: A study of school architectural design as a context of secondary school teachers' work

This dissertation explores the relationship between school architectural design and secondary school teachers' work. Specifically, it examines the relationship between school architectural design and teachers' patterns of activities and interactions in classrooms and other spaces in the school with students and colleagues. The study describes how teachers actually use their work environment, how teachers' real use of the school facility compares with expectations as embodied in the school architecture about what their experiences should be, and how school architectural design supports or constrains teachers' execution of current images of effective teaching and schooling.; Despite changes in the expectations about teaching and learning over the past two centuries, the images or perceptions of teaching and schooling conveyed by school architectural design remain remarkably consistent. A repeated image is the teacher as technician using limited material resources to transmit knowledge to batches of students. This study compares the experiences of teachers with traditional role conceptions to teachers with non-traditional or expanded role conceptions of their work in two public high schools designed around non-traditional images of teachers' work. One school was originally designed as an open plan school but was later modified into a traditional arrangement, and the second school is a new school designed with the intent of supporting current images of effective teaching and schooling. Despite the non-traditional images of teaching each school was designed to support, both schools project strong traditional images. Furthermore, traditional and non-traditional patterns of teacher activities and interactions are found in both schools.; Seventeen teachers were observed and interviewed over the course of a school year. Each teacher's activities and interactions were fully documented through the collection of behavior maps, field notes and approximately 2,500 photographs. Selections of photographs were used in the interviews as a means of soliciting the participating teachers' interpretations and meanings that they attribute to their activities, interactions, and work environment.; Except for a small group of teachers whose conception of their role centers around the needs of their students, all of the teachers in this study arranged their classroom space in a traditional pattern of rows and columns of student desks with an established front of classroom. Although arrangement of space was similar across teachers and schools, closer examination of their construction and use of space revealed significant differences based on differing role conceptions. Teachers with traditional role conceptions are well supported by the school facility regardless of its design. Teachers with non-traditional or expanded role conceptions continually modify and are dissatisfied with their work environments. In addition, teachers' uses of other spaces in the school are also related to their work patterns. Teacher leaders, such as department chairs, take more frequent, but shorter trips to the administration building. Teachers with non-traditional work patterns leave their classroom less frequently to visit colleagues, but for longer periods of time than teacher leaders. Traditionally patterned teachers who do not take on leadership roles rarely leave their classrooms or engage in work related interactions with colleagues.; By examining teachers' work patterns and how they actually use space to facilitate their work, this dissertation contributes knowledge and a shared language by which architects and their school clients can initiate and advance conversations that elicit explicit images about schools as organizations and conceptions of teachers' work, and the facilities needed to support them.