I’ve been engaging with an issue I’ve deemed the Pedagogy Problem.
A legitimate phenomenological question to ask about, say, a library would be “What is a successful library experience and how does the Watzek library building sustain or undermine that experience?” Asking a question framed in such a way would give the researcher a platform from which to evaluate the work. Sure, from a formal perspective concerned with image the building may be gorgeous, but in terms of its ability to facilitate experiences specific to libraries it fails in these specific ways… (i.e. it’s maze-like, there’s nowhere comfortable to sit and read, no natural light, etc.) My problem is that asking a similar question about the living buildings (schools) I’ve selected seems to focus more on pedagogy and environmental education than on architecture. That is, my question would be “What is a successful environmental science education and how does the Bertschi school science wing/Hood River Middle School addition sustain or undermine that experience?” The problem is that the beginning of the question “what is a successful environmental science education…” seems a lot more contentious to ask and tricky to define than for example asking what a successful grocery shopping experience might be. Certainly this approach is problematic if applied to many buildings we interact with everyday (what would posing this question to houses look like? What is a successful living experience?) and reveals a difficulty in the phenomenological evaluation of architecture. But in the context of my project, asking this question (what is a successful ___ experience…?) has highlighted a murky area in my thesis, and that is the pedagogy problem. My concern is that to effectively analyze these schools phenomenologically I will have to learn everything about environmental education before I ever set foot in them, and definitely before my first thesis draft is due. My concern is therefore methodological to an extent, and is also due to the type of building I have selected (schools vs. libraries). It’s a bit ironic, seeing as the bulk of my education and experience in schools can be labelled “environmental.” Still, I’m no expert. (a tangent; I find this to be one of the most exciting aspects of architecture. To design good schools the architect must be able to think like a student and teacher. To design good hospitals the architect must become both patient and practitioner. The same with all buildings and practices…)
How do I maintain a focus on the design of the living buildings, while effectively accounting for the pedagogy of the schools with my limited knowledge of environmental education?
As I said, my problem seems methodological. But fortunately, I think my solution may be found in my methodology as well.
That is, my phenomenological approach broadens pedagogy by examining the implicit effects of the background “noise”/patterns in architecture that influence learning, indirectly related to explicit learning (i.e. formal pedagogy). This is why I don’t have to evaluate what a successful environmental education (experience) is (as I’m not qualified to do so), rather, I can focus on the architecture and its relationship to learning and the learning experience, or experience of learning (which is something I am fortunate to have lots of experience with!).
I’ll also be doing some reading around environmental education journals/publications to see what’s hot, and to see if I can find anything to inform my research.
Do let me know if you have any ideas or think I should approach this pedagogy problem from a different angle.
ALSO(!), I thought I’d take this opportunity to share the first (very rough) draft of my full-on thesis outline.
You can find it here: thesis_outline