Andrea Wheeler (2008) Architectural and educational perspectives on Cmmunity and Individual Agency in Creating Sustainable Human Society. AGENCY 5th International COnference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association, The University of Sheffield

1. Architectural and educational perspectives on
community and individual agency in creating
sustainable human society: Social cohesion and
sustainable behaviour?
Andrea Wheeler, BA (Hons) DipArch, MPhil, PhD
ESRC Early Careers Interdisciplinary Research Fellow, The University of
Nottingham, Institute of Architecture/and School of Education
(ESRC Project (RES-152-27-0001): How Can We Design Schools As Better Learning Spaces and To
Encourage Sustainable Behaviour? Co-Design Methodologies and Sustainable Communities.)

2. [A] “Policy is still being developed on the back of anachronistic understanding of how
behaviour is influenced and what makes people change. If we are to move beyond
the current limited policy approach, then new thinking is required …we may need to
change the structures, institutions and processes that govern how we live our lives,
and the inequalities we experience in our society” (Lewis, 2007, 5).
Lewis, Miranda (2007) States of Reason: Freedom, responsibility and the
governing of behaviour change. IPPR.

3. [B] The problem of pro-environmental lifestyle change, of encouraging
sustainable behaviour or of sustainable citizenship, is not simply about
individual choice.
“The concept of sustainable behaviour suggests the need for an
engagement with ‘human nature’ and social structures – and an
understanding of the relationship between these two…”
Gabriel and Lang 2006, Halpern et al 2003, Jackson 2008, 2006a&b,
Darnton 2008

4. [C] Polly Griffiths ‘The role of young people in developing sustainable
communities’ . William Scott similarly argues in his paper “Sustainable Schools: An initial
appreciation and critique” that if schools are to take the challenges of
sustainable development seriously, they will have to address thinking and
working in profoundly different ways (Scott, 2007, 5) Scott, William (2007)
“Sustainable Schools: An initial appreciation and critique” In Headteachers
and Bursars Handbook for Sustainable Procurement. SCEMES Limited.
Available at:
http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/_doc/11418/Sustainable%20Schools%20-%20appreciation%20and%

5. [D] Child-friendly Cities are a UINCEF Initiative, Rotterdam has just …but
even within this initiative there are import debates going on. We cannot
create only ‘children’s spaces’ as if to relegate children from the city to
their own realms. We need play spaces, and social spaces and safe routes
to school and home. Child friendly cities need to be integrated with school
designs, but the issue is a pegagogic one – to teach young people to how
to negotiate and live in shared cities.

6. Pedagogies of connection…
[E] I am arguing for the development of a ‘pedagogy of connection’ - which may
include a co-created set of values - and an integrated urban and architectural
strategy that develops a better sense of sharing of school/city/world and it’s
resources.
Elaine Unterhalter suggests that ‘pedagogies of connection’ are essential to
develop the skills we need to respond to the social inequalities and instable
climate conditions global warming will bring.
Jacqueline McGlade, Director of the European Environment Agency in the recent “Towards
a Post Carbon Society” Conference in Brussels argued that it is a change in ways of relating
that we need: From valuing ownership of assets to valuing access to services. McGlade,
Jacqueline (2007) “Economics, society and new challenges of climate change” a
presentation made to the “Towards a Post Carbon Society” Conference at the European
Commission Brussels, October 2007.

7. Amartya Sen

8. Social Cohesion…
Definition of social cohesion
To have genuine social cohesion we need genuine human
agency.

9. How does architecture understand and architectural theory
inform understandings of the relationship between agency
and social cohesion?
Social Cohesion, the policy perspective.
Current modes of thinking in architecture
about social cohesion.
What models of agency are being adopted or assumed
both by policy makers and architects wishing to comply
with demands?
BSF and Social Cohesion.

10. Designing New Schools and the Building Schools for the
Future programme
Pedagogies of connection allow us to bridge the interdisciplinary divide between education and
architecture and respond to the problem of how we might begin to encourage sustainable behaviour. There
is an ethical dilemma within the discourse of sustainable behaviour over the potentially paternalism
approach of initiatives, but it is one that can be addressed …
The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme launched in 2004 is described as set up:
To improve the fabric of school buildings, either through refurbishment or new build;
At the same time as transforming learning and embedding sustainability into the educational experience.
(House of Commons, Education and Skills Committee, “Sustainable Schools: Are we building schools for the
future? Published 9th August 2007, p. 3 )
2004
Tony Blair, at the start of the programme, proposed: ‘Sustainable development will not just be a subject in
the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own
power. Our students won’t just be told about sustainable development, they will see and work within it: a
living, learning place in which to explore what a sustainable lifestyle means’.[1]
1] Blair, 2004 PM Speech on Climate Change 14th September 2004, Archive No. 10 Downing Street,
London, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6333.asp (accessed 06 May 2008)
2007
The more recent Children’s Plan: Building Brighter Futures, published in December 2007 by the Department
for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), even states an ambition for all new school buildings to be zero
carbon by 2016.

11. Why use this tool? Because of the existing
criticisms
Criticisms of BSF

12. How does architecture understand the relationship
between individual agency and sustainable behaviour?
Sustainable Behaviour and the policy
background.
In January 2008 Defra published its framework for pro-
environmental behaviours
http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/social/behaviour/index.htm.
As with many government reports on lifestyle change, the focus
is on individual behaviour, less on the relationship between the
individual, his/her habits and social or community structures.
BSF
Architecture and changing behaviour?

13. How does architecture understand the relationship
between building community and sustainable behaviour?
Architecture and community?
Individual and Community
Architecture and well-being
BSF Extended Schools and Regeneration

14. How does education understand the relationship between
agency and social cohesion?
Children’s Rights and Every Child
Matters. Children have the right to
participate in decisions that effect their
lives.
Education policy and the defintion of
social cohesion
Educational criticisms
Paulo Friere
Pedagogies of Connection

15. How does education understand the relationship between
individual agency and sustainable behaviour?
How does educational theory understand the role of
individual agency in creating sustainable human society?
From the earlier Rio convention education has been at the heart of ----
Education for Sustainable Development
Sustainable Schools
The conflict of participation and
paternalisms – the ethical dilemma of
lifestyle change.

16. How does education understand the relationship between
building community and social cohesion?
BSF and social renegeration.

17. How does education understand the relationship between
building community and sustainable behaviour?
How does educational theory think about pro-environmental lifestyle
change and encouraging sustainable behaviour?
Healthy Schools, citizenship, extended schools, schools as a focus for
regeneration in deprived areas, inclusion.
Amartya Sen and well-being: A
capabilities approach.

18. How can we come to a more sophisicated and authentic
understanidng suitable to the complexity of encouring
sustainable behaviour and social cohesion? How can
architecture fit eith this? What can architectural theory
contribute to a more refined understanding, and what can
educational theory add to criticisms of the current
undeveloped relationship between architectural design and
educational theory?
How can I test these relationships?

19. The space to discover who I am, who you are…

20. MY METHODOLOGY? A developed/modified ‘grounded’
approach using discourse analysis, conversational
analysis, narrative analysis (analysis of narrative events)
visual analysis.
What are the problems with social
science methodologies and the
search for evidence and the need
for evidence based policy
decisions?

21. So what do children think? What do they
think sustainable lifestyles are? What do
they understand from teachers, from
culture and from the media? What do they
think their schools will be like? And how
do they see their relationship with the
world and others in the future?

22. The workshops
I carried out workshops with young people aged 10-14/15 years old (Years 6-10) and some sixth-
formers. I asked them about their experiences of school. I asked them a broad set of questions, about
school buildings, the school day, food, sport, how they travelled to school, playtime, play areas,
hobbies, time out of school, their local environment, their friends and I listened when stories emerged
– stories they wanted to tell me about good and bad behaviours, good and bad spaces, stories about
adult behaviours and the conflicts they feel. The stories that most interested were those that
constituted a sort of ‘event’ in the workshop and tended to be emotionally charged, (but there was also
enthusiasm in design, and in design solutions discovered). I asked them to design, both separately
and together- and was often asked to help and negotiate competing ideas in group exercises (I had
been introduced more often that not as the architect by children’s teachers).
In each school I visited I set out to carry out 4
workshops with 4-6 students over a 4 week period,
of between 1-2 hours each. Not all the students
turned up every week, not all the groups were
interested in the project, some decided not to attend
weeks 3 and 4 and others were positive and
enthusiastic and wanted to continue past the four
weeks. Some groups wanted to talk more than they
wanted to design and some wanted to design and
not answer my questions. Sixth formers tended to
be keen to discuss, 14 year olds tended to be
suspicious, concerned with what others in the group
thought, judged others in the group and wanted to
know whether my research would really achieve
anything (backing this up with their own stories).

23. What happened…
…and what did we talk about…
• Excitement over solving a design problem (collective or individual) –
including excitement about their own design idea.
• Story telling events, in conversation and whilst designing –
sometimes about real events and sometimes more imaginary stories
about what happens in their schools they’ve designed. Also songs
and making up rhymes.
• Observations about the workshops themselves, the meaning or
value of them, relating the workshops to the real, what I was doing
as a researcher and what they thought about this, either in response
to my questioning or emerging whilst designing. (Bigger thinking
outside the workshops themselves).
• Teasing others in the group. Boys verses girls (issues about
difference - gender and race).

24. 1. “Global Warming Panic”
DIALOGUE 1
V1: Has anyone seen that movie? The day after tomorrow?
The media portrayal of V2: Yes
environmental change loomed V1: Some people that that is going to happen, the day after
tomorrow.
large, the young peoples’ V3: Oh is that the one where the earth gets flooded? Yes,
stories expressed a real the world all gets flooded and stuff like that.
problem of how do we get V4: I gave all my clothes to the Tsunami when that
happened.
young people to behave V3: What do you wear then?
responsibly towards a broader V2: I don’t know what’s going to happen to the world, who
knows what’s going to really happen. Whether we’re
and future other whose world going to get finished off by flooding, whether it’s going
to fly into the Sun, whether we’re all going to die due to
we cannot know and where our global warming.
action has no immediate or V3: We’ve got a few years left.
apparent effect? V2: Whether the Magma’s going to come out and flood the
world with Magma. Who knows whether someone will
create a Zombie virus and bring Zombies, dead people
back to life. Who knows if aliens don’t exist and they
might destroy the earth. I’m just coming up with theories
about what might happen to the earth. I’m thinking be
might implode.

25. 2. “Is it our responsibility?”
DIALOGUE 2
AW: What do you think it would take to make people behave
more sustainably?
Whilst young people felt V1: There’s a lot of rubbish on the field, more bins around the
confused by media back for the school… […]
V2: Supermarkets are saying to people [to recycle], but they
portrayals of the dangers of put drinks in packets and wrappers […]
environmental change and V3: On some packing it says you can recycle it, but some
global warming they also people just chuck it on the floor […]
V2: Because one some games, computer games, there’s like
questioned me on whose plastic and you’ve got to separate it […] they should make
responsibility it was. Should an easier way to recycle.
I really be trying to change V3: It’s not just like the public getting it wrong because the
Government aren’t really doing much about it […] and
their and others they are sending it to India!
behaviours? AW: Yeah, I saw that TV programme too.
V2: Everyone is just worrying about the credit crunch, the credit
crunch at the moment.
V3: It might be about the public, but it is the Government as
well.

26. 3. “It costs more to be
environmentally friendly
doesn’t it? “Greed,
consumerism and other
vices?””
DIALOGUE 3
AW: Do you think the credit crunch […] or the ‘economic crisis’ AW: Do you think people could stop behaving like this?
has something to do with global warming? V1: Some kids get spoilt abit sometimes […] because
V1: Yeah [boys responding to the question] kids get spoilt my Dad started saying things I don’t
V1: Because the banks are lending money, but people aren’t need and I want I have to buy it myself. It teaches
paying it back… me how it’s going to be like when I grow up. You’re
limited in what you can buy. And one’s that get
V2: Because it’s like [a man] maxed out like six credit cards
spoilt should do it as well […] because when they’re
and killed himself, and then his wife had to pay it off.
older it’s not going to happen and you need to work
V1: Because like if moneys gone out of your bank account you for it.
won’t have enough money to buy light bulbs.
V2: People want, want, want, they want to go on holidays, they
want big cars, they want their children to have the latest
video games.

27. 4. “The problem of habit”
DIALOGUE 5
V3 [girl]: Is it about habits? It takes alot to break habits. […] you
know with the green umm… thing it’s the way you’ve been
brought up, I think, and the way you act. If you act like you
share all the time, you won’t be greedy, but if you don’t share
and you say “no I want that now” not later, that’s just greed.
V1: And if you want it, it’s better for like the credit crunch and
everything, and it’s cheaper, a week later.

28. 5. “Children’s agency and lifestyle
change…”
DIALOGUE 6
AW: Do you think it is young people that recycle and care more than their
parents?
V1: Yeah they might.
V2: Depends on their attitude.
V1: I want to say that it doesn’t depend much on the adults, it’s like you
act, you don’t have to copy them. You can just say “no”, “not doing
that”.
V3: Life is too short to live someone else’s life
V4: Life is what you make it.
V2: That was on an advert.

29. 6. “Good spaces and bad spaces,
good and bad behaviours…”

30. DISCUSSION
Schools as transitional spaces …
but from what to what?
Schools as architectural
metaphors. The Language of
Schools. An analysis of metaphors.
Schools as second homes? (The Lanterns)
Schools as shop windows (creating a connection to the community) (Everest Community
College)
Schools as ‘malls’, ‘streets’ and ‘market places’ (Samworth Academy)
Schools as ‘call centres’ or mills or factories (Victorian Schools)
Schools as prisons (Djangoly, Nottingham)
Schools as farms (Montessori and Care Farming)
Schools as villages (Melbourne Universities ‘Experiments’)

31. Everest Community College,
Hampshire Borough Architects
Architectural metaphors tell us how to behave in a space: school as
school means children as customers and consumers…what does
the children’s conversation tell us? School as submarine, how do
we behave/learn there? Learning and playing, learning and
socialising…

32. Submarine School/ Classroom, Boy,
Aged 10

33. Underwater School/ Classroom, Boy,
Aged 13

34. If sustainable development is to be encouraged honestly and effectively, young people
will have to enter into a discussion of community, relation, social cohesion and all the
political and philosophical complexities this entails.
Furthermore, young people will have to reconcile the need for reduced consumption
with the consumerist norms of their peers – which is certainly a challenge for the
teaching profession. Exploring the question of living and dwelling – of feeling at home
- with young people presents a way to explore these issues and a way for architects to
respond. We need some very different ways of both teaching and designing in the
21st century if we are to address the social and environmental problems that climate
change will bring and important issues are being ignored

35. Beach School/ Classroom, Aged 10

36. .Arcade School/ Classroom, Boy
Aged 10

37. Thank you
andrea.wheeler@nottingham.ac.uk
www.sustainability-and-schools.com