The democratic learning landscape

Abstract

Main themes of the project are primary education, shrinkage and democracy. The relation between primary education and democracy can be found on two different scales. The first one is the regional scale, which is about how educational buildings are organized in a region in relation to each other. The second one is the building scale, and is about how the architecture of educational buildings can make learning environments more democratic. Democracy is in this sense a social form of democracy, in which all people get’s involved and every person get’s the opportunity to explore and develop it’s capacities. Regional scale A 30% shrinkage in the age of 4 till 11 is expected for 2020 in Vledder (The Netherlands) and it’s surrounding area. According to the current system only the biggest schools will survive, because of financial reasons. Organizing the schools in a different way, gives the opportunity to involve the whole region in learning and therefore the bigger schools aren’t longer placed above the smaller ones. Building scale Education as we know it has been set up by the higher educated with math and language as main goals. However multiple pedagogical theories show many forms of intelligence and ways of learning. The architecture of learning spaces should therefore also fit to this plurality of intelligence: a highly differentiated learning space that stimulates every intelligence and gives the opportunity to every child to develop distinctive capacities.