Is your school ready for the future? Part 10/12

Education Readiness Review

 A readiness assessment is required to determine what is needed to create facilities that meet the perceived needs of future educational challenges.  Dr. Darren Cannell will be providing twelve review criteria that can and should be used to reviewing your facilities.  This exercise will  make sure your facilities will be ready for the future educational challenges as predicted by the latest educational research and teaching.

The concern of such an educational review is that it will support future challenges but will not dictate the direction of the educational changes.  The design and approach need to be such that it supports current practices but is versatile enough to accommodate the possible future changes and trends.  To effectively assess the readiness it becomes necessary to review the perceived future trends in educational technology and educational pedagogy and theory.   This review of the trends will have direct ramifications on the facilities and will require certain designs to accommodate these trends.

Dr. Darren Cannell is a consultant who does building assessments and staff training.  He can be contacted at 

dcannell5@gmail.com

The tenth of the 12 trends is as follows:

Spiritual Cultural area

Space is needed within the walls of a school to allow the spiritual and cultural growth of learners.  These areas should be very central in the school, so it allows them to help in the welcoming and spiritual atmosphere of the institution.  The location with the building also speaks to the importance attributed cultural awareness.  These areas focus on cultural awareness, curriculum development, language learning, cultural celebrations, workshops, and the sharing of traditional life skills.  These are only a few of the activities that could happen in the cultural area. 

Cultural education and technology must be infused into the curriculum and not treated as a one-off or add-on.  Master teachers and elders in need space of within these areas to allow them access to the students and to be involved in the development of curriculum and educational support.