Open-plan schools and important teacher competencies: What are teachers’ opinions?

Abstract

This article presents the results from a survey conducted among teachers in Oslo in the fall of 2010. The survey had the aims of finding out teachers’ preferences regarding school architecture and examining teachers’ perceptions of the relationships between school architecture and their ability to practice important competencies as teachers. Regarding the latter, the survey showed that teachers who worked in traditional classroom schools were far more satisfied than their colleagues who worked in open-plan schools (baseskoler). The survey also showed that the vast majority of teachers wanted new school buildings to be built that had a starting point in a traditional model, with a regular classroom for a regular group of pupils. This was also the case among the teachers who worked in open-plan schools. The survey is the first to examine the relations between school architecture, in terms of open-plan and traditional schools, and teachers’ perceptions of the possibility to make use of important competencies.