From Uniformity to Sustainable Diversity: Exploring the Design Attributes of Renovating Standardized Classrooms in Korea

Abstract

Modern school buildings in South Korea, which were until the 1990s typically designed with standardized and monotonous features based on drawings provided by the government, are shifting to more well-designed spaces under a student-centered approach in this more creative and imaginative era. The purpose of this study is to examine the renovation priorities of design features based on the preferences of architects and educators, paying particular attention to classroom design for enhancing students’ spatial and aesthetic experiences. For this unusual approach, architects and school educator groups, who jointly plan the renovation of traditional classrooms, were surveyed on classroom design features and the spatial and aesthetic experiences of students. Forty-nine responses were analyzed using an importance–satisfaction analysis (ISA). The gap analysis for all respondents showed significant differences—a significance level of 0.05 between importance and satisfaction—in 31 design attributes in traditional and standardized classrooms. Both the architects and the school educator groups designated five attributes as being of the highest priority for the classroom renovations: ventilation, overall classroom shape, shape of furniture, floor material, and furniture material. Results of these analyses could become considerations for future classroom renovations by local governments to enhance educational environments. In addition, policy recommendations for applying the results of this study to be sustainable classroom renovation throughout South Korea could be an important topic of discussion.

The Development of Sustainable Assessment during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of the English Language Program in South Korea

“…Despite the successful adaptation to the new sustainable language assessment examined herein, additional research on equipping language instructors with tools and guidelines for alternative and sustainable language assessment could act to enhance their collective ability to align learning with assessment. In order words, it is important to provide language instructors with adequate training and afford them with appropriate professional development so that they can equip themselves with the skills needed to develop sustainable language assessment (c.f., Kim [41]; and Lee et al [42]). As previous research on online learning has pointed out, the high dropout rate and students' inconsistent engagement in learning has been of a concern to practitioners and administrators (Friedman and Friedman [43]; Lee, Choi and Kim [44]; and Park and Choi [45]).…”

Smart Classroom Adoption in Higher Education: A Thematic Review

“…A well-designed smart classroom is necessary to maximise teaching effectiveness using appropriate technology. In South Korea, a study by Lee et al (2019) exploring on the design attributes of renovating standardized classroom in the classroom. This change is critical because it has the potential to increase students' active participation and interaction (Tripathi et al, 2020) and supported by a construction of framework design of smart classroom in universities based on pedagogy-Space-Technology framework (Zhan et al, 2020).…”

A study on the correlation between seat selection and interaction preference in virtual-reality fusion simulation experiment

“…In addition, most of the existing studies on seat preference and interaction in learning focus on the testing environment in small and medium-sized classroom spaces with a single seating type and layout type. Few scholars have discussed the change in learning interaction caused by students’ seat choice behavior in polymorphic layouts and more open learning environments, although this is an important part of the design of modern teaching environments ( Lee et al, 2019 ).…”