How We Assess [I-5]

(COPYRIGHT © 2009 MIKAEL POWELL. All Rights Reserved)
I was fascinated with the reading by John Dewey entitled “How We Think”, especially with the difference between casual and idle thinking and reflective thought in regards to beliefs. My domain is ‘Assessment’ and I am particularly interested in how the built environment affects learning in higher education. Architects evaluate the facility in a post occupancy evaluation (POE) asking questions to the users of the space. Typically, the results are used to document the project, revise or renovate the facility and to develop a prototype for such facilities or list of best practices (See the figure 1 for a very basic example of an evaluation sheet). One of my areas of study is critical interpretation of representation in which one analyzes space to discover elements that exert control and influence aesthetic development, social change, cultural diversity, economic equity, and political enfranchisement. Indeed, even the form offered in figure 1 is developed in concert with values of the institution.
This is the first time I ever considered the process of the user in filling out the evaluation forms. As evaluators, we need to solicit reflective thinking, not casual and idle. When Dewey writes about casual thought, he says it “may mean a supposition accepted without reference to its real grounds. These may be adequate, they may not; but their value with reference to the support they afford the belief has not been considered. Such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the attainment of correct belief. They are picked up -we know not how. …. Thoughts that result in belief have an importance thinking attached to them which leads to reflective thought, to conscious inquiry into the nature, conditions, and bearings of the belief”(page 4).
I think this involves respondent education and developing forms that encourage an evaluation process, which includes examining the grounds for beliefs. It is not new thinking that users may need more structure in evaluating their space. In the Brazilian schools, researchers solicited responses from elementary students about their new school and discovered that students had to be taught about the concept of environmental comfort (“thermal, acoustic, and functional comfort as well as on good lighting conditions”), and learn to relate it to their life experiences before they could effectively rate their school environment.
Moreover, evaluation of learning spaces can empower the individual. It is unmistakable that architecture as an art form always expresses something - how important it perceives itself to be, how much it chooses to aid the patron through its structure and the hierarchy it gives to particular spaces, how responsive it chooses to be to cultural concerns and the intention of university administrators, department heads or lead professors that expose their agenda in what and how and at whose expense they choose to build. On beliefs that are unsupported Dewey goes on to say “From obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture. Tradition, instruction, imitation-all of which depend upon authority in some form, or appeal to our own advantage, or fall in with a strong passion - are responsible for them. Such thoughts are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence” (page 4). More critical interpretation of the architecture should encourage user introspection and recognition of the political aspects of the built environment. A process of examining the foundation of beliefs within building evaluations can prove valuable in routing out the status quo and promoting social change.