Relating building space to performance outcomes – A methodology to explore the relationship
Introduction
A school as an educational facility has its buildings, which constitute of spaces serving different functional uses. The use of spaces could be for administrative, educational or recreational purposes, and the availability and limitation of a space as well as its quality would have an impact on the user experience in performing different functions. The availability of spaces for educational activities and the specific purposes they are used for, can be considered as dynamic and evolving in reality. Considering that the space used for educational activities is limited by the total built space of a school in general, a school would often be faced with the dilemma of adding space or reorganising space, to ensure better use of it to achieve the required goals of the educational institution. With space representing typically about 20% of costs of an educational institution [1], its effective use, allocation and reorganisation therefore plays an important role in effectively delivering the educational program.
Designing of schools requires due consideration as the school facilities have been found to make a significant impact on the effectiveness of education received by the students, attributable to several factors including the teacher and student experience in the educational facilities [2]. The positive impact of physical environment of schools in improving the quality of education has often been overlooked, however considered increasingly important [3].
Considering that the primary purpose of a school, as an operator of an educational facility is to optimise its space use to maximise the educational performance of students, this paper intends to address the need to relate the use of built space for educational use, specifically focusing on the distribution of the space among several categories of use encompassing different educational activities to the educational outcomes. The paper intends to investigate whether the allocation of space in a building to different use categories, aiming a uniform level of utilisation, would lead to better use of building resources (space) to produce higher level of educational outcomes. The framework has been developed using a primary school set up in Australia as an example. In this instance, the educational performance measured through the National Assessment Plan for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), a standard assessment scheme available for the Year levels 3, 5, 7 and 9 in Australia, is used as the main indicator to demonstrate the methodology proposed in this paper. The study acknowledges however, that holistic educational outcome that schools are expected to provide to students cover a much broader scope, as for example stated in the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians [4], in addition to the educational parameters tested by NAPLAN.
Section snippets
Review of previous studies
This section provides a critical analysis of the previous research conducted contributing to or complementary to the work presented in this paper.
Conceptual framework
The paper presents a methodology to characterise the relationship between the space allocation ratios of different spaces used for educational activities and the educational outcomes as measured through a national assessment scheme, NAPLAN. The conceptual framework stating the methodology in four main steps is presented in Fig. 1.
In order to investigate the relationship between proportional allocations of space use categories in a school, considered as the input, to the assessment outcomes of a
Application, demonstration and results
This section demonstrates the application of the process and shows sample results when the methodology is applied. A parametric study is carried out to demonstrate the variation in results, where a sample data set is applied using this methodology.
Summary and conclusions
This paper conceptualises how the space distribution in an educational setting, particularly considering public schools, relate to the educational performance of students in a school. The educational performance used in this instance is specified as the student educational outcome measured through NAPLAN. After identifying how the educational performances measured through NAPLAN and the space use ratios for each space use categories (SUC) can be correlated (does not necessarily mean causality),
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Mayuri Wijayasundara: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Software. Lihai Zhang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Investigation, Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis. Colin Duffield: Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project to drive innovation and value in operational infrastructure (# LP160100259) titled: “Innovative procurement theories to optimise educational outcomes per total cost of school facilities” for the support and funding for this study..
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