3.  DESIGN FOR LEARNING EXPERIENCES

School landscape design can foster abundant opportunities for play, nonformal .and formal learning.  This section provides an overview of four key types of experiences that enrich learning, six design qualities that facilitate these experiences, and five themes of landscape character that integrate these design qualities for place-based learning.  The discussion draws from a review of related articles in the past ten years of Landscape Architecture magazine, a literature review, and my research, teaching, and writing undertaken with colleagues, design students, and children.  Literature references are made for the reader to explore in greater depth and perspective. 

3.1  Key Experiences and Design Qualities

In school landscapes, spatial and material design qualities need to support meaningful experiences for cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.  Reggio Emilia educators "speak of space as a 'container' that favors social interaction, exploration, and learning, but they also see space as having educational 'content,' that is, as containing educational messages and being charged with stimuli toward interactive experience and constructive learning" (Gandini 1993).  This view offers a framework for defining key experiences and qualities that enhance learning in the landscape. 

This discussion draws from the author's experience (including Johnson and Hurley 1999) and varied literature.  Three recent publications in particular have informed this section and are highly recommended for further reading: 

•     Natural Learning  The Life History of an Environmental Schoolyard, by Robin C. Moore and Herb H. Wong;

•     Landscapes for Learning  Creating Outdoor Environments for Children and Youth, by Sharon Stine; and

•     Special Places, Special People  The Hidden Curriculum of School Grounds by Wendy Titman of Learning through Landscapes. 

The following interrelated four experiences and six design qualities may be considered as guides to developing school landscapes that enrich learning.  One may ask whether, where, and how well the following experiences are supported and design qualities are contained or expressed in a designed landscape. 

3.1.1  Experiences

Learning is enhanced when multiple senses are engaged, when children actively take part rather than passively listen, and when learning occurs in a setting that is part of daily life.  The following experiences are supported in enriching landscapes:

1.   rich and varied sensations

•     Learning experiences engage the senses of touch, sounds, smells, tastes, and sight with opportunities to discover changes and variety for each sense.

•     Children learn through relating space to their own body and movement, engaging large and fine motor skills as well as cognition (Olwig 1990).

•     Creative learning and play intensifies the senses through imagination, surprise, or discovery.  Framed views, attention to details, magnifying the minuscule or becoming another life form, can foster the sense of wonder that Rachel Carson described for children's experiences in nature (1956)  (figure 7). 

		figure 7 A wooded slope provides multiple opportunities for experiences of sensation, movement, and imagination. photo by:  author

2.   abundant choices

•     Varied activities foster the development of different intelligences.  These range from active to passive, organized to individual, physical challenge or risk as well as mastered activities that represent security.

•     Choice in social interaction allows one to be part of, observe, or remain separate from a group.  Stine observes that providing children with choices in social interaction is essential, given the school environment's significance in a child's daily life (1997).  Children have echoed this need for choice, particularly for places to find solitude amidst daily activity (Titman 1994, Johnson 1999).

•     Alternatives where children move through, over, under, around spaces and use different forms of moving, such as crawling, walking, running, or cycling, offer developmental challenges as well as enhanced ways of knowing a place.

3.   opportunities to make changes

•     Children need to create and change their environments (Hart 1979, Moore 1986, Stine 1997).  This process of constructing or de-constructing gives empowering experiences, be it in a garden, pond, fort, or dirt mound.

•     Opportunities to interact and experiment with objects and materials are essential to enriched learning.  As Simon Nicholson articulated in his theory of loose parts:  "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it." (1971). 

4.   personalized sense of place

•     Opportunities to choose from and be in a range of comfortable settings help foster personal meanings and emotional attachment.  Such settings may be ones that mitigate the climate, allow children to explore yet feel safe, and afford choice in where to go and with whom.

•     Opportunities to be in spaces that one can claim as one's own, as well as places that can support community traditions, build personal connections with place.  In Natural Learning, Moore and Wong discuss making a sense of place, including the incorporation of meaning-laden found objects, creation of personal "nooks and crannies", and participation in community gatherings that become rituals.

•     Places and features that are named by children reflect imaginative and emotive attachments developed through experiences over time, and demonstrate personal understandings of a place.

3.1.2  Landscape qualities

Design qualities of enriching landscapes create containers for desired experiences and offer layers of educational content that relate curricula with the local context.  The following six qualities seem essential:

1.   natural and cultural systems

•     Places and objects enable discovery of how natural and cultural elements interact as parts of a system, such as stormwater supports the school landscape, where it goes, and how the hydrologic cycle is revealed beyond the school landscape.

•     Natural and built elements are manipulable; Stine describes the importance of both natural and people built elements in the school landscape, underscoring the need for children to explore both process and product (1997). 

•     Earth, water, and vegetation are present, in varied expressions, textures, and sizes, to engage the senses and imagination. 

•     Daily weather and seasonal natural patterns are revealed through elements such as sun dials, vegetation, wetlands or water catchment systems.

•     Cultural or historic elements are included which relate to neighborhood or community places, activities, or events and which celebrate learning for members of the school and local community.  For example, a garden that contains plants from the home countries of students and their families can inspire stories, curricular activities, and community events.  Sculpture or seasonal banners may also provide insights.

      Children's preferences for nature and natural elements, are well-documented (Francis 1988, Freeman 1995, Moore 1986, Stine 1997, van Andel 1990).  Water, a universal source of fascination, is an essential component that often is challenged by liability issues.  Creative approaches are needed to include water, be it as a wetland in a habitat area, a bubbler in an interactive sculpture (figure 8), mist spray in a garden, or even a channel for rain water to move along a paved surface.

		figure 8 This ornamental fountain at Seattle's Belltown Pea-patch offers opportunities to see, touch, and hear the water as it bubbles onto a dish and splashes through the grate below.  This piece is a collaborative creation:  Myke Woodwell designed and constructed the garden solar fountain; Louie Raffloer designed and forged the iron work, and Kay Kirkpatrick designed, created and installed the ceramic tiles. photo by:  University of Washington Center for Environment, Education, and Design Studies

2.   connections

•     Views from classrooms that contain diverse natural and cultural features, create opportunities for immediate curricular connections.

•     Transitional indoor/outdoor spaces, such as protected terraces provide places for groups to gather or study. 

•     Although school entries and edges need to address security, they also must afford visual, if not physical, access with surroundings.  Adjacent public open space should be easily accessible for field studies.

•     Places within the school landscape should encourage desired neighborhood interaction, such as an entry courtyard for informal gatherings or community events.

•     Plant species and built elements relate to the site's microclimate, neighborhood, community, and region.  Thus, school landscapes enable children to develop an ecological literacy grounded in their immediate setting with tangible and abstract connections to the community and region. 

•     To enable study of recycling common materials and more sustainable development approaches, reused or recycled materials and sustainable design principles should be present and made explicit.

•     Connections made to the greater biosphere with elements featuring the air and sky, such as framed views, wind-activated materials or sculpture. 

      In Natural Learning, Moore and Wong describe explorations of seasonal and daily patterns, including those of air space.  They note the richness of a "sky sculpture" out of silver mylar strips hung across the Environmental Yard:  "It became a glittering pulse of bobbing columns of light suspended in an ocean of air, marking the faintest breezes with languid reflections, at other times dancing before the setting sun. . .  and emitted hard, crinkling sounds when blown horizontal by strong Pacific winds." (1997, p. 79).

3.   legible and complex image

•     Research by environmental psychologists Stephen and Rachel Kaplan and Robert L. Ryan shows that legible and complex landscapes address people's needs to both understand and explore their surroundings (1998).  This team's research using environmental preferences of landscape images revealed that preferred two-dimensional images contained what they defined as coherence and complexity.  Similarly, the three-dimensional inferences of these images suggested what they termed legibility - which includes orientation by memorable features, and mystery - which invites discovery of what lies beyond (figure 9).   

		figure 9 A formal gate and plantings frame this school habitat entry, with a picnic table inviting use.  While this image offers legibility, the composition of plantings create a sense of mystery regarding what lies beyond them. photo by:  Diane Pottinger

•     The cognitive structure identified by Lynch in The Image of the City provides a framework to design for legibility that also applies at a site scale: paths, nodes of activity, edges, districts, and landmarks.  This framework correlates well with findings that children tend to orient themselves by activity and value sensory-rich qualities (Olwig 1990). 

•     Complexity and mystery in materials, objects, and spaces afford children developmentally enriching choices.  They may draw upon their understanding of known places, yet also seek challenges in less familiar, or changing, settings. 

•     Daily and seasonal changes in the landscape's natural and cultural qualities contribute to complexity and create opportunities for greater ecological understandings. 

      The spaces of many school sites are very legible - a hedge lined street edge, a chain link bordered play field, and a play structure set in an island of bark mulch - yet these spaces provide little opportunity for discovery or meaningful choice.  Legible images also requires complexity at varied scales, in materials, and through temporal change, to exhibit what Jane Jacobs described as "intricacy" - a quality that invites returning to a place with opportunities for fresh insights (1961). 

4.   varied scales

•     Varied scales of paths and places support a range of functional, social, and personal meanings.  Teachers may select spaces appropriate to group sizes and activities.  Large gathering places can serve a large class or community and school events.  More private and intimate scaled places allow for small group or individual reflection and study (figure 10).

		figure 10 This courtyard offers abundant choices for sociability, with varied scales of spaces defined by natural and built elements. photo by:  University of Washington Department of Landscape Architecture teacher workshop images

•     Child-sized places that provide for prospect and refuge are particularly valuable for imaginative play and solitude (Author 1999, Kirkby 1984, Moore and Wong 1997, Stine 1997).  Stine identifies the value of "perching places," (1997) which correlates with Jay Appleton's prospect-refuge theory that we find pleasure in places that offer the ability to see and not be seen (1996).  Moore and Wong describe the value of affording "nooks and crannies" for children to personalize and develop a sense of ownership for the schoolyard (1997).  These places included elevated logs, rocks, and clusters of plantings.

•     Varied topography and structure levels define a range a spaces, and afford choices in movement, sociability, and activity (Adams 1989, Moore and Wong 1997, Stine 1997). 

      LTL author Eileen Adams notes:  "Children . . . welcome variations in topography, changes of level, variation in height, slopes, terraces, steps and mounds.  These provide a change of outlook and vantage point, a chance to move in a different way, to vary the position of the body in space, to change the social situation.  They can be the focus for all sorts of games and encourage an active involvement with the environment" (1989 p. 18). 

5.   flexibility

•     Open-ended, flexible, or unfinished spaces provide opportunities for children's imagination and creativity to flourish as well as for alternative activities within a curriculum. 

•     When elements can be moved, changed, and re-created, children can engage in creative play and discovery, bringing to life Nicholson's theory of loose parts. 

    If conceived as a commons, the meaning of a flexible space may change as “actors” and “props” that claim it at a particular time animate it.  Such space may serve as a performance space, a festival site, a student construction area, or a gallery at different times.  The space may be reserved as children’s' adventure playground whose unfinished appearance is accepted, understood, and valued. 

6.   aesthetic quality

•     The poetics and beauty of places engage the mind and spirit.  School landscapes need to be designed to make the site's inherent and designed beauty accessible to children. 

•     For children, beauty is not simply experienced as a visual composition, but as a setting that engages all the senses, particularly at the detailed, close to the ground scale (Olwig 1990) (figure 11).

		figure 11 School entry gardens may provide a lush composition of colors, textures, and scents. photo by:  Diane Pottinger

•     Places are needed for children to create, enact and display their own expressions of art, such as a changeable gallery and/or performance space.

The predominance of asphalt and play fields on schoolyards today impacts students beyond their aesthetic appreciation.  LTL researcher Wendy Titman describes the cultural meanings that children infer from their schoolyards in Great Britain as a "Hidden Curriculum".  She found this Hidden Curriculum "affected children's attitude and behaviour, not only in relation to the grounds or whilst children were using them, but in terms of the school as a whole"  (1994, p. 55).  Much like the college student's reading of an asphalt Seattle schoolyard described at the beginning of this paper, Titman relates children's views that "tarmac or concrete was all their school could afford and read from this that the tarmac was a measure of the worth of the school and of themselves as part of it" (1994, p. 33). 

3.2  Themes for Landscape Character

Aside from the standard formula of play equipment and ball fields, school landscapes that are designed as learning environments embody the qualities described above, offering enriched learning experiences.  These landscapes express a unique sense of place that relates to their context, yet generally exhibit certain themes in their character.  Five themes are discussed here.  Two of these themes - habitat and gardens - serve as a foundation for which the others - sustainability, cultural and artistic expressions, and interpretive features - give added layers of meaning.  The themes provide a framework for design that fosters learning through varied interpretations of place.

3.2.1  Habitat

Schools across the US are creating or restoring schoolyard habitats (figure 12).  As settings to attract wildlife, habitat projects may be as simple as a grouping of butterfly-attractive plants, or as extensive as an urban forest that connects with a regional open space system.  For example, Professor Dan Donelin, FASLA, and colleagues at the University of Florida developed a schoolyard ecosystem program that has been widely used across that state.  The program's workshops with teachers provide curricula and illustrate how they can create habitat with their students ("Schoolyard Ecosystems" 1994).  The NWF's Schoolyard Habitat program serves as a national resource, providing "how to" information as well as grants for implementing habitat.

		figure 12 A school's courtyard is enriched as habitat. photo by:  Diane Pottinger

Schoolyard habitats can provide multiple benefits, particularly if connected with their surrounding context as part of a larger ecosystem.  For example, connections of school landscape drainage patterns with surroundings extend learning possibilities beyond the immediate school site.  A restored wetland, surfaced stream, or stabilized hillside on the school grounds makes the surrounding watershed an integral source of inquiry.  Such habitat improvements enhance local ecological quality, extend formal educational opportunities, and serve as ever-changing places for play and solitude.  Additionally, as an open space for the community, they may serve as a catalyst for enhancing the surrounding community's ecosystem. 

In the 1970s, the 1.5 acre asphalt schoolyard of Washington Elementary School in Berkeley, California, grew into a diverse natural area including ponds, a waterfall and stream, a pine grove and chaparral hill, along with play areas and structures, and a meeting space.  Moore and Wong (in Natural Learning:  The Life History of an Environmental Schoolyard, 1997) describe the variety of natural elements children engaged on the site, how these were integrated with curriculum, and how student and community participation in transforming the site fostered a sense of community.

This transformation demonstrates that the design process of creating or enhancing habitat on existing school sites holds experiential learning potentials (see Section 2), as does the "finished," yet continually evolving, place.  For example, as part of the design and construction process, children may assist with aspects of demolition and construction, remove invasive species, plant native plants, and observe the changes to the system over time. Students may continue to care for the habitat through formal stewardship or mentoring programs, as well as by a personal attachment to this place.  Students at Seattle's Dearborn Park Elementary (see case study in Section 5.1) care for an adjacent urban forest, and older students mentor younger classes.  When I visited this forest, student guides picked up trash scattered along the trail and questioned why people would drop it (figure 13).

		figure 13 Students gather trash as they guide visitors through the school's urban forest. photo by:  Dale Lang

3.2.2  Gardens

Although some schoolyard habitats may be characterized as school gardens, the term is used here to define areas managed specifically for agrarian and/or aesthetic intentions (figure 14).  School gardens were widely developed in the US during the turn of the 20th century and are receiving a resurgence of popularity.  In a study of early 20th century school gardens, Brian Trelstad places them in the context of educational reform and other social, political, and environmental changes (1997).  He traces a myriad of causes for the decline of school gardens in the 1920s, including the loss of a national funding program, growth of recreational programs for children, improved urban conditions, and lack of support among educators to integrate them with the curriculum.  While several of these conditions still exist today, a number of schools are developing gardens, with curricula and support from varied sources.  For example, California's education system is committed to developing gardens in its 8,000 schools, and has 1,650 in place already (Raver 1999). 

		figure 14 Students care for a mini-orchard at an elementary school in Jamaica Plain developed through the Boston Schoolyard Initiative. photo by:  Kirk Meyer, director, Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative

Gardens offer a range of formal learning potentials as well as community-building opportunities.  The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California (see Section 2.4), is integrated with curricula through an environmental education focus.  The program also focuses on sustainable practices, and includes a holistic understanding of food production, eating, and composting.  In addition to garden staff, teachers, and students, local volunteers take part in caring for the garden.

3.2.3  Sustainability

Sustainability may be an overarching goal for habitat and garden design themes and may serve curricula while guiding decisions for site development, materials selection, and management practices.  For new school development, sustainable planning and design means a change from standard site clearing to an approach that seeks to preserve and enhance existing vegetation and drainage patterns.  On existing school sites, restoration of habitat is undertaken.  These efforts support local ecosystems, and where possible, help connect open space corridors.  Sustainable approaches to stormwater management can conceptually inspire a school's masterplan, and in practice may reduce impervious surfaces and capture and recycle stormwater on-site.  Drawing from the site's ecology, sustainable design means using plant species and groupings that offer habitat and don't require irrigation, as well as building structures made with the recycled and non-toxic materials.  Sustainable management practices reuse or recycle materials on-site.  Examples range from a simple compost area to stormwater management systems such as cisterns for clean runoff or plantings for biofiltration .  Such sustainable practices create an interactive laboratory for student and community learning.

Leadership in sustainable design is well underway at higher education facilities.  The NWF's Campus Ecology Program includes publications of innovative practices used at colleges and strategies for change, a newsletter, and directory.  At Oberlin College, Professor David Orr has spearheaded the collaborative development of the Center for Environmental Studies, a facility that will serve as an educational model of green design technology.  The Center's landscape also will offer lessons, with a wetland to capture stormwater run-off, an organic garden and orchard, and indigenous plants (Masi 1998). 

The University of Washington's Garden of Eatin' is an example of sustainable principles applied in a courtyard space.  Landscape architecture professor Daniel Winterbottom and lecturer Luanne Smith led a design-build studio in 1998 that transformed a parking area into an edible garden and gathering place (figure 15).  The courtyard features a cistern that gathers rainwater from the adjacent building roof and uses this water for irrigation.  The cistern's overflow system features a playful series of troughs with fish crafted from found objects.  Recycled materials are used throughout the garden, including rubble of the site's former concrete paving as a retaining wall and recycled plastic lumber used for a ramp (figure 16).

		figure 15 The University of Washington's Garden of Eatin' demonstrates use of stormwater catchment and reuse, recycled materials, and edible plantings. photo by:  author

		figure 16 The Garden of Eatin's ramp of plastic timber leads to a secluded sitting area and secondary building entrance. photo by:  author

3.2.4  Cultural and artistic expressions

School grounds may express the artistic and cultural diversity of its student body and community through "artist in residence" programs or similar initiatives.  These may inspire the creation of objects such as sculptures, entryways, tiles embedded in walls, paving, or seating and/or the character of a garden, performance space, or entry (figure 17).  A "sister city" or "sister school" program may also inform particular features, events and studies, such as a garden displaying native plants or child-created artifacts from that sister city or school.  Such programs hold valuable learning opportunities if students participate in the design and construction of the pieces.

		figure 17 This ornamental schoolyard gate was designed by artist John Tagiuri with students at East Boston's O'Donnell Elementary School through the Boston Schoolyard Initiative.  artwork © John Tagiuri, 1998. photo by:  Kirk Meyer, director, Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative

Seattle's Dearborn Park Elementary school has many Asian American and African American students, and the school landscape features an "International Garden" where vegetables from school families' homelands are grown.  During the summer months, student volunteers tend the garden.  The plants give tangible cultural connections, as families bring traditional dishes to the school community's annual harvest festival. 

3.2.5  Interpretive features

Although interpretive exhibits are more commonly associated with parks or museums, these can also give meaning in school sites.  Examples include historic natural and cultural artifacts that can enrich students' and the community's understandings of place and time (figure 18).  Structures can be designed for manipulation in formal lessons or creative play.  Interactive equipment to measure weather, generate energy, or create music offers other possibilities.  Additionally, spaces can be designed to be animated for particular seasonal events.  Oberlin College's Environmental Studies Center features a solar plaza, where calibrated shadows will mark the solstices and equinoxes (Ingalls 2000).

		figure 18 This neighborhood map at a South Boston elementary school playground offers playful and curricular interpretations of place and scale.  The map is part of the schoolyard’s redevelopment designed by Wallace Floyd Design Group. photo by:  Kirk Meyer, director, Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative

A recent school landscape project by Robin Moore includes an exciting interpretation of cultural history (Raver 1999).  In 1995, Moore began working with Southern Pines Elementary in North Carolina, to create the Blanchie Carter Discovery Park on the school's four acre site.  An extensive path system winds through play and habitat areas to a student-built log cabin and campfire circle reflecting local culture.  With parents' guidance, third graders constructed the cabin using 18th century type tools.  They cut logs for the campfire circle, which has become a focus for stories, gatherings, and play.  It is easy to imagine how the construction and campfire experiences immerse children's senses with the history of this place and its people.