WELCOME TO
OUR
PROJECT
How to create a learning environment and structure that best suits students, provided by research and feedback directly from students themselves:
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How should educators design a learning environment and implement guidelines that best benefits student learning and success?
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F O C U S Q U E S T I O N
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How do different administrative decisions regarding school operations and routine affect and influence students and schools?
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To what extent does a school’s environment and structure impact student learning?
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How should we as educators best design a school system to successfully implement an optimal learning environment?
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I N Q U I R Y Q U E S T I O N S
BACKGROUND
&
RATIONALE
The purpose of our project is to provide a multifaceted analysis and comparison of the similarities and differences between two distinct educational learning environments.
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As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, school district's across the country were posed with a new challenge upon the re-opening of educational intuitions: how to best go about re-entry into schools.
Every school in the province began the new calendar year with different routines and procedures, after much contemplation and discussion amongst educators and administrators. For some schools, the chosen structure was brand-new to both students, staff, and community.
Our anticipated result is to create a project that can act as a resource, promoting informed discussions amongst future administrators and educators about designing optimal learning environments that best suit student needs. We focus primarily on school structure and investigate the effects of different calendar types.
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Our goal is not to support one educational model over the other, rather to provide information about different types of school structure, backed with data from students, educators, and administrators and advantages and disadvantages provided from professional literature.
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The activities we chose to gather data include a survey and interview. Our survey canvased information gathered from students ranging from grades 7 - 11, allowing us to collect a vast range of data and feedback.
Additionally, information was collected from two distinct school communities: a rural junior high and a city high school, which allowed for a variety of student perspective to be included in our project.
Our interview activity was also conducted with school administrators, surveying the rationale behind the school calendar and system chosen.
Our questions were designed to take into account administrator's personal preferences of school structure based on their past experiences as educators.
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Activities & Process
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Schedules
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yearly vs ¼ vs semester
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40 mins vs 3 hour blocks vs 90 minutes
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8 classes a day vs 2 classes a day vs 4-5 classes a day
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Lunch breaks: 30 mins vs 2 (20 min) and 1 lunch hour
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Community
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City high school with 1, 400 kids vs rural junior high with 261 kids total (K-9)
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Perspective of Educators
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Time frame of teaching concepts relative to the school calendar
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Students attention span relative to the class time and number of classes per day
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Students interaction in smaller vs bigger class sizes
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Planning differences and needs to accommodate a smaller school learning environment vs a larger school
Read over the list of topics and areas our project covers to best provide future educators with detailed feedback when designing a school's structure.
Content