Do we still need Schools?

Costa, Ana (2021) Do we still need Schools? In: ImaginationLancaster Design Summit: Flourishing Organisations, 2021-05-202021-05-20, Zoom.

Abstract

During COVID-19, school closures kept 90% of all students out of school, reversing years of progress in education. Remote learning remains out of reach for (at least) 500 million students around the world. Over the last 25 years governments around the world have been investing huge amounts of money on their school’s buildings. In some cases, providing a transition from traditional school buildings to innovative learning spaces that can accommodate different teaching and learning approaches. According to OECD-UNICEF ‘schools should be reconceptualised as ‘learning organisations that can react more quickly to changing external environments, embrace innovations in internal organisation, and ultimately improve student outcomes.’ (OECD, 2016). More than ever, we need learning organisations capable of equipping students with the knowledge and skills they’ll need to succeed in an uncertain and constantly changing environment. COVID-19 pandemic revealed that schools can be more responsive than previously considered and consequently moving towards a resourceful learning organisation. But what school’s spaces do we really need? How can we flourish from COVID-19 pandemic and rethink the future of spaces and tools for learning? How can we design spaces and tools for learning that have the capacity to change and adapt routinely according to circumstances and user’s needs? How can design research and design for education shape the spaces and tools that enable schools to flourish as learning organisations?