Building Features in Schools That Influence Academic Performance

Abstract

School decision makers are faced with a great many decisions when considering a school renovation or new school building. All stakeholders want a building that is safe and provides an optimal learning environment. However, it is often difficult to know which building features will have the greatest effect on student learning. Because of a limited understanding of the relationship between individual building features and student learning, researchers at the University of Oklahoma hope to explore how building components influence student and teacher performance. This paper explores the importance of school building features that can be designed and changed during a renovation project. The hope is to one day determine which features have the greatest impact on student test scores. The research team believes that although it is difficult to find the exact relationship between each building features and student outcomes with one study, if multiple users repeat the same or similar studies, hopefully we will one day know the effect of these building features. In order to develop feature building users survey and physical assessment tools, it was necessary for investigators to develop a list of important building features and their associated definitions in layman terms. This was accomplished through utilization and conducting of a CAB (community advisory board) and subject matter expert materials. In addition, previous research relating to different school building features and their associations with student performance were reviewed. To define and narrow the list the researchers, community educational, and building professionals rated based on their professional experience, how directly related each feature is to student performance. The building feature list serves as a starting point to determine which features should be analyzed in a later phase of the project. It is hoped that resulting tools based on the work of this project can be used by school decision-makers and researchers to access building features that have been identified through research as being important for student and teacher performance.