Revista da Faculdade de Engenharia, Arquitetura e Tecnologia Vol. 4 Nº 1 Out. 2002 ISSN 1517 - 7432

Ergonomics and an Appropriate Learning Environment

Paulo Kawauchi 1

Kawauchi, P. Ergonomics and an Appropriate Learning Environment. Revista Assentamentos Humanos, Marília, v4, n. 1, p101-107, 2002.

This paper was presented as a conference in the III International Congress of Education - Palácio de Convenções do Anhembi, on May 19th, 1996. It was also published in the periodical Educação Gráfica, in October of 1997.

Key Words: School environment, non-verbal reading, prospective vision.      Palavras-Chave: Ambiente escolar, leitura não-verbal, visão prospectiva.

1 Doutor em Arquitetura e Urbanismo pela FAU - USP. Professor dos cursos de graduação e de pós-graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Faculdade de Engenharia e Arquitetura da UNIMAR.

On the objectives if my thesis:

Before starting the subject school environment, I want to clarify my way of thinking over this, the research topic of my doctorate thesis.      The principal objective is to show an alternative methodology for the development of research related to public schools in general.      The main aim is to make all those who utilize the school environment (teachers, students, staff, parents), aware of the importance that the school has for all.      For these two reasons I have written as objectively as possible about the school from a holistic point of view so that satisfactory results might be achieved wherever it were applied.

On the thesis tittle:

"The language of school environments: a systemic reading, a prospective vision", sums up the research methodology itself through analytical reading, which emphasizes all man's created systems decoded in the built school environment: physical, scientific-technological, historico-cultural, socio-political, economic, administrative and ideological systems.       The non-verbal language. All school environments have non-verbal language which can be "read" through an non-verbal reading.       The perceptive reading. The first tool for this kind of reading is the visual system, observation, attentive selection, capture and analysis of the visual elements through drawings, through photos, through town maps, through building plans, etc.       The analytical reading. The second kind of tool is the analysis of the images selected, relating them to the data gathered through bibliographic research, field research, questionnaires, etc. which can be obtained from several places, such as the Teaching Bureau, City-Hall, old teachers, ex- students, older neighborhood residents, etc.       The prospective vision. At the end of this analysis a new understanding of the school arises, by checking the problems, the priority needs of the school community as a whole, through to an identification of the potentialities this community has or can get.       Only after the complete diagnosis will the school be able to organize its teaching system to attend the priorities of the school community's social, economical, ecological, political concerns.       Teachers, students, employees, members of the community, who really become involved during the development of the projects, will play important roles, as they will not be interchangeable. Each person will have his value as a cooperating individual, leaving his anonymous or alienated role, typical of the ordered, specialized, and bureaucratic work of the industrial era.       This is the moment when each school environment will be organized according to the interdisciplinary projects proposed.       Its is important to notice that, even the public elementary and high schools will have their identity. They will no longer be standardized as at present, and teachers, students, employees and neighborhood dwellers, will start cooperating with their knowledge during the development of interdisciplinary projects. According to McLuhan, "an illiterate will be able to be a teacher" ... and so he shall!

On the publicity of an interpretation of my thesis:

It is worth noting that, because of the publicity of my thesis through "FOLHA DE SÃO PAULO (1/30/1996), I received and continue receiving telephone calls, letters, invitations for lectures, always in the hope that I should have " a recipe" for ideal class-room organization or that the thesis referred to a discovery of the ideal school environment. If that were the case, I should only be changing the traditional teaching tools for electronic ones. I should only be changing the classroom furniture for more modern furniture or adequate microcomputers. Really with this thinking, l would not be innovating at all, I would not been contributing in any way, I would just be recycling, making the traditional school environment more agreeable, more aesthetic, comfortable and modern, I would be creating a new standard school environment, with the difference that now it would be computerized.       To achieve this, neither research nor thesis would be necessary, because the relevant industries and commerce could very well organize these environments. Of course the thesis refers to Computer Era, but in the first instance, it is concerned with society, with the human beings who use this school and who hope it will be the means of change for a society in crisis. The resources of computerization should contribute to the welfare of society and not the opposite. Alvin Toffler, one of the greatest thinkers of our age, shows a prospective vision in this respect, in his book "The Third Wave".

On the alternatives of organization and creation of school environments:

I suggest that the built school environment, that is, the school buildings be exploited to their maximum, through rearrangement of their inner space, of the classrooms, for instance:      1 - Video-rooms; The video-rooms may be several in number to meet the needs of several projects at the same time. While in one room programmed videos are being passed with the aim of distant education as in TeleCurso 2000, in another a variety of documentary films could be shown, while in another room interesting films may be shown for analysis with the students.      In each room, according to the programmed subjects of the interdisciplinary projects, there must be the guiding teachers in order to elucidate doubts or prepare activities concerned with the subject matter.      Some of these rooms could continue to use common school desks, when the program is distance teaching like TeleCurso 2000. The other rooms don't need traditional desks when the activities are films, documentaries, etc.      For this kind of school environment it would be a good idea to use an easily cleaned floor covering, so that cushions, armchairs, etc. could be used. allowing the students to feel at ease, as if they were in TV rooms of their own homes.      After all, students learn as much in home as in the school - one must be the extension of the other.      2. Microcomputer rooms: These should also have the appropriate furniture for microcomputers. I suggest a maximum of 10 to 15 microcomputers in each room.      Some rooms should have specific teaching programming in Portuguese, Mathematics, History, Geography, Natural Sciences, Physics where students learn through computerized methods. The computer rooms should have computers for children up to 12 years old, others with programs for children of 1 2 to 14 years, and others with programs for teenagers up to 18.      For this case with 15 to 45 microcomputers one can outfit from 1 to 3 laboratories with capacity for 30 students each (two students for each microcomputer).      3. Inside the built school environment: The students may have very diversified environments depending on the inter disciplinary project in hand. While some students will be using the computer labs, other will be distributed between the three television rooms which will have capacity for another 30 students, while others will be doing field research or reports on research already done and occupying common rooms or in bibliographical research rooms, or in some of the workshop rooms especially created to attend community needs (sewing, painting, modeling, joinery, cooking workshops, etc.).      4. School environments outside the traditional space: The activities are not necessarily carried out in the internal space of the school building, but anywhere where an interdisciplinary research is taking place. I shall include here some interesting examples for study and research.      4.1. The students may be learning how to prepare compost (organic manure) from trash in some nearby plot, to apply in community vegetable-gardens or to study the possibilities of the creation of micro-industries to attend the local agriculture. It should be remembered, food doesn't grow in microcomputers! In this case, the school environment is in the fresh air, under the orientation of two or more teachers concerned with the interrelated programmed works. The compost making technician or the agronomist or the chemist could be the students' teacher during this experiment, which will enrich the students' intellectual repertory on awareness of environmental problems.      4.2. All the themes related to daily life are important for the education of Society. The school should educate the citizen for life in order to be happy and co-operative in his society.      On the theme "Hygiene" , for instance, one could begin a very interesting research. To start with, the school environment can be the inner space of a supermarket where some products concerned with hygiene shown in selling displays are analyzed.

Studying industrialized products:

We need personal hygiene products (toilet soap, tooth paste, hair shampoo, hydrating cream, etc.), we also need house cleaning products as detergents, disinfectants, soap powder etc. Why don't traditional schools teach these chemical compositions during the physical, chemical and biological sciences? Suddenly we perceive the traditional school has educated us to be industry dependent including primary needs products such as hygiene and food products.

Studying the school curriculum;

The curriculum had and has as objective the preparation of workers for the benefit of industries, educating us to be producer or consumer. Overall we continue to be dependent whether as consumers or as the producers who depend on the consumer.

Questioning the possibilities of change:

Why can't we learn to produce things which we really need? This will the information society behavior described by Alvin Toffler as "prosumer" _ the one who produces for his own consumption.      Even when not dealing with computer activities, this kind of "prosumer" behavior should be developed in school through interdisciplinary projects whose goal is to develop the habit of research, of co-operation, starting by being a co-operator in the economy and in the work in one's own home.      This example of project can be developed through at least, seven different school environments:      1. The supermarket for data collecting on the research purpose;      2. An ordinary classroom for writing reports on the environmental perception;      3. A spacious room, such as an auditorium, or even the school yard, where each student or teacher can express himself orally about the report and its written analysis, in order to organize together the interdisciplinary project, which will have industrial chemistry as basic knowledge for chemical experiments;      4. Environmental space of a local cleaning product industry;      5. A common room where reports may be written on the environmental perception of the industry;      6. An room adapted as a chemical laboratory in order to do the first experiences;      7. The student's own home where he will carry out his experiments with his colleagues. As one can see, in this example only twice the students use a traditional classroom and they learn much more Mathematics, History, Geography, Portuguese, Design, Drawing, Chemistry, Physics, English. The approach to these subjects, in interdisciplinary projects would produce a really important knowledge as a methodological parameter for teaching and research in the first and second grades, in the same way as it would motivate students in the habits of investigation, observation, analysis. The theoretical subject learning related to each subject can be achieved and improved by the use of video, in CD-ROM programs or with the use of common soft- ware. The teacher should remove the students' doubts, during learning, by means of computerized tools, and orientate them about his subject during the interdisciplinary projects. The teacher no longer "teaches" in order to "mould" the student's intellectual capacity. The duty of the teacher is to know how to orientate during research and answer questions during the theoretic studies through television, computer or by providing a bibliography. I think this alternative teaching methodology for primary and secondary levels developed during my research breaks away from all the traditional teaching characteristics of the industrial age as analyzed briefly below:      a) STANDARDIZATION - traditional teaching seeks curricular standardization of teaching programs, and standardization of the school environments, of the students, of the teachers.      b) SPECIALIZATION - Traditional teaching aims at professional specialization in all knowledge areas. Teaching is disintegrated, linear, it blocks the student from making links between several knowledge areas, and getting a holistic and systemic view.      c) CONCENTRATION - Traditional teaching is only possible starting from the students' concentration in classrooms, in the built school environment. Knowledge is also concentrated in teaching books and bibliographies.      d) SYNCHRONIZATION - Traditional teaching is only possible with the synchronization of classes, subjects, schedules, courses, contents. It eliminates diversification of subjects because one bit of knowledge is pre-requisite for the others.      e) CENTRALIZATION - In traditional teaching way, the Secretary for Education, the Teaching Commissioners, the School Headmasters, the Teachers, centralize the rules that should he followed according to their functions, obeying the hierarchy and bureaucracy.      f) MAXIMIZATION - Traditional teaching is characterized by teaching in mass. The aim of this teaching is not community priorities, but the standardization of the teaching, as if the historical, cultural, social, economical, administrative, physical, environmental, scientific, technological, political differences which identify each place didn't exist.

Conclusion

If my researches serve to develop school environments which may transform a community in crisis into a happy co-operative and participative society...      ....If the research methodology serves to give value to each individual of a district community as being very important to all...      ...If my reflections serve to make teachers aware that teaching exists to educate people, not things...      ...then I believe it was worthwhile researching and writing this article.

Bibliography

Kawauchi, Paulo. A Linguagem dos Ambientes Escolares: uma leitura sistêmica, uma visão prospectiva. Tese de Doutorado, FAU - USP, 1995.      Sachs, Ignacy._s20 Ecodesenvolvimento: crescer sem destruir. São Paulo; Editora Vértice, 1 986.      Toffler, Alvin . A Terceira Onda. São Paulo; Editora Record, 1982.      _____ Guerra e Antiguerra. São Paulo; Editora Record, 1983.      Capra, Fritjof . 0 Ponto de Mutação. São Paulo; Editora Cultrix, 1982.      Lima, Lauro de Oliveira. A Mutação na Educação segundo McLuhan. São Paulo; Editora Vozes, 1987.