PROGRESSING PRACTICES OF SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL DESIGN

This article discusses a survey of contemporary practices of sustainable school design.It reveals a trend that relies on technological fixes and outlines barriers to this,primarily related to lack of awareness of benefits,and a limited perception centring on the process of pre-design,design and construction but ignoring the use phase.To overcome the barriers,this article argues that a paradigm shift is required,embracing the creation of sustainable systems through a holistic approach to education,so that design operates and interacts with other disciplines.The suggestions provided could also be used to improve sustainable architectural practices in general。

Sustainable school projects as the education tool for delivering sustainability

In the past ten years,many exemplar projects are completed in China to encourage the sharing of knowledge and experience of sustainability.Many of these projects are landmark buildings,and because they can attract more public attentions,they raise more awareness of sustainable development.However,school projects are rarely mentioned in the news and annual inspirational project lists.The fundamental point of this paper is to challenge the common concept in China that school buildings are only used exclusively by children in formal education.According to the paper's review of the school schemes in England and Wales,not only the inspirational sustainable schools created the opportunities and responsibilities to accelerate positive changes,but also they developed a vision of an asset that supports lifelong learning and sustainable lifestyles for the whole community.In this paper,the definition of a 'sustainable school' is summarised by comparing the statements and concepts in England and Wales.Moreover,a wide range of benefits gained by project stakeholders and communities are also demonstrated through case studies.In the end,lessons and innovations which can be learnt by Chinese school projects are concluded.The illustrations provided by this paper do not aim to solve all issues of promoting a sustainable school in China,but to open people's minds to the impacts of their actions,and to build the knowledge and cooperative framework to promote public sustainable projects.

Post-war Sustainability-Driven School Buildings: A Review of the Literature

The Safe Schools Declaration of 2015 is an inter-governmental political agreement signed by several countries designed to protect the schooling of the school-aged population during armed conflicts.Yet,in countries where civil war erupted,schools were demolished.Several school-aged children were either forcibly recruited by governments or coerced by rebel groups to serve in armed fights.As a result,several children were deprived of their education and have remained suffering from deep psychological scars.The central question of the study is:What kind of sustainability-driven school buildings can be initiated in countries that are now enduring peace so that the learning environments are more comfortable and improve the well-being of the war-impacted children and school employees?After reviewing the literature,a strategic conceptual framework that incorporated the synergistic relationship between economic,social,and environmental aspects of sustainability was initiated to map out sustainable school buildings.In short,the conceptual framework proposed to construct school buildings in some of the war-affected developing countries includes assembling cost-efficiency and eco-effectiveness inputs,using renewable energy sources powered by natural sunlight,collecting rainwater in mud cisterns,reducing emissions of carbon oxides,and empowering the local community to be the main actors to design sustainable buildings during the preconstruction,construction,and post-construction stages to serve as learning spaces for the war-affected occupants and their neighborhoods.

PASSIVE DESIGNED BUILDINGS FOR ACTIVE CITIZENS BECAME SCHOOLS OF SUSTAINABILITY:A PROPOSAL FOR SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE

1.INTRODUCTION Sustainability has been defined as the need to preserve existing natural resources so that the earth is able to continue to provide these resources for future generations.Put more simply,a sustainable system is one that survives or persists(Costanza and Patten,1995).In order to ensure the sustainability of architectural and building activity,it is essential that work in this field is conducted in accordance with the canons of basic ecology and,in addition,that its members seek to address certain cultural and relational characteristics that typify the way we live today.Architecture as a discipline combines technology and art;however,with the advent of“sustainable architecture”additional concepts from the fields of ecology,sociology,and philosophy have been incorporated.Yet,the fundamental problem is that the meanings of both the classical and the new concepts remain ambiguous,their significance shifting with our cultural evolution.Hence,the traditional Vitru-vian values of architecture(beauty,structure and utility)are no longer so obvious,especially when we are required to think in terms of sustainability.Although the question as to why architecture matters has been answered in a variety of ways(Glaeser,2011),it is our contention that in the 21st century architecture will matter more than ever,because by 2050 most of the world’s population will be con-centrated in cities.As a result,the sustainability of dwellings and cities has acquired undeniable importance.Two interacting forces influence all populations.One is the Malthusian dynamic of exponential growth until environmental limits are reached(Figure 1).The second is the Darwinian dynamics of innovation and adaptation that circumvent these limits through biological or cultural evolution.Nekola et al.,in 2013 reported that the specific manifestation of these two forces in our current society provide the context that establishes how humans may develop sustainable relationships within our finite planet(Figure 2).Consequently,a permanent and indefinite growth is impossible due to the physical and biological imperatives of our finite world.Biologists and architects and constructors usually inhabit different worlds.The latter innovate,deploy,and apply their techno-science based designs;the first,study the finite nature,propose hypotheses,and gather their evidence.And,to date,there is little to suggest that copying nature purports any advantages to architects,primarily because fully autonomous buildings or towns have yet to be built.According to the described Malthusian-Darwinian dynamic,the two critical questions that we seek to address in this paper are:i)What is the essence of a sustainable dwelling?and ii)What principles should be adhered to in making a dwelling sustainable?In other words,this study aims to elucidate the essence of sustainability in green building design implementation.

Quality Input and Sustainability in Early Immersion Classrooms:A Case Study of an Experimental School in Macao

This paper looks into the case of a school in Macao nominated as the first(and so far the only)China-Canada-United States English Immersion(CCUEI)centre in the Macao Special Administrative Region(Macao SAR)China for the experimentation and application of English immersion instruction(EI)in the K1-3 and Primary 1-2 classes.Drawing on Krashen’s Input Hypothesis(1982)and Cummins’(2000)framework of instruction for language learning and academic achievement in the formal school context,the authors report their observations by analyzing the data collected from school teachers and participation in classes and by reflecting on their experiences,and suggest improvement that can be made to teachers’linguistic and communicative competence,in terms of quantity and quality of comprehensible input and expected output,and thus the sustainability of English immersion classrooms in a Chinese context.