Primary school Simeon Aranicki, Stara pazova, Serbia
Primary school Drinka Pavlovic, Belgrade, Serbia
Silverdale secondary school, Sheffield, UK
Fort Pienc primary school, Barcelona, Spain
Schools in Campinas, Brazil, exectued by Marcella Savioli Deliberador
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Marta Last name: Brkovic Dodig Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: A non-govermental organisation ARQubator, where I act as a founding director. ARQubator is voluntary, non-profit and non-governmental association of architects, aiming to observe, develop and implement contemporary trends in architecture. Its` main aim is to actively involve children, young and grownups in order to improve living conditions in natural and built environment.
Through iterative process of research and design this association reaches empirical evidence and uses them:
- for educational purposes with students at university, and
- in practice for improving the quality of architectural designs.
ARQubator sees the role of architects as societally relevant and advocates the use of architects` knowledge and skills for solving global problems at local level. Nationality: Serbia Function: Founding director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Dimitrija Avramovica 49 Town: Belgrade Postal code: 11030 Country: Serbia Direct Tel:+381 63 8213595 E-mail:marta.brkovic@gmail.com
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Yes
New European Bauhaus or European Commission websites
Spector – The Sustainability Inspector is a game developed as a participatory post-occupancy tool for discussing sustainability aspects of schools from the primary and secondary school pupil`s point of view. For architects, looked through the prism of social sciences, it is a participatory post-occupancy tool comprising of participant’s observations, photo-expedition, semi-structured group interview with mapping. For teachers and pupils, it is an experiential teaching/learning tool based on Kolb’s learning cycle. The game consists of 4 steps – suspect, inspect, discuss and detect. Guided by 22 cards with social, environmental and economic sustainable school topics, pupils in teams with other stakeholders examine school spaces and collect photo-evidence. Afterwards, they discuss the evidence through a board game, assemble the photos, positive and negative comments, and ideas from improvement on evidence board while mapping them simultaneously on a school plan.
The game amalgamates two processes – a research and evaluation process for architects, and teaching/learning process for pupils. The game puts on eyelevel various stakeholders involved in designing, evaluating and running schools: teachers, school management and maintenance personnel, architects, urban planners, local city/education development administration, with children; giving the children a much-needed tool to voice their opinion on sustainable school aspects impacting their learning and living the school.
While most of the existing post-occupancy tools are reserved for experts, Spector reverses the roles of expert-user and gives a tool to children to identify, document, and argue their opinion of sustainable aspects of schools. Also most of the existing teaching/learning tools, especially in east European context, is primarily textbook based, depriving children on immediate context and real world learning scenarios.
Gamified analysis and learning is fun both for children and other stakeholders.
participation
post occupany evaluation
education for sustainability
games
spatial pedagogy
The game includes 22 sustainability topics relaying on UN Sustainable Development Goals and European Green Deal objectives. Spector enables children to discuss sustainability aspects of their school in a participatory and inclusive manner. In architecture and urban planning sustainability assessments are reserved for experts, and carried out through certification systems like BREEAM or LEED. Occupants, especially children are seldomly involved. Spector as a framework gives pupils a well organised tool to identify, explore, document and argue their opinion on sustainable school aspects. With a wealth of written, photographed and mapped data children confidently argue their opinion, voice their concerns and produce suggestions for sustainable school space and life improvement among adult stakeholders; hence being seen by adults as advocates and knowledgeable change makers.
Through the game pupils understand sustainability - holistically, where all sustainability spheres social, environmental, and economic are intertwined, mutually reinforcing, and not mutually excluding, multidisciplinary – where knowledge from many subjects and all spheres of life (school, friends, family, etc.) should be connected, and contextually – where their actions are embedded and impacted by their physical and cultural context.
The game supports critical thinking and use of prior knowledge, increases pupils self-esteem, self confidence, and responsibility. By playing games, players make decisions, solve society's complex problems, and learn to live with the consequences of their decisions.
The game increased pupil’s sensitivity towards sustainability issues and supported environmental stewardship building. Spector provided pupils with a framework which they took outside of the game play, to act proactively, to be empowered and competent change makers while developing sustainable strategies for future participatory initiatives.
Observing the game Spector this category can be analysed through 2 levels. First, how Spector enables players to discovers, sense and discuss aesthetics, school space experience, positive emotions and cultural diversity embedded in the schools space. Secondly, how the physical game playing elements respond to these categories.
Among 22 sustainability topics Spector’s points players attention to sense of community – supporting players to examine to what extent school space is representative of different communities in and around school, and how is school connected to the neighbourhood/city, and which community members can use school spaces. Spector also raises cultural diversity as a topic, asking players to examine how are different cultures, nations and religions are presented through school spaces and activities. Spector raises a sense of a place as a topic, asking players to examine is their school space inspiring, stimulating, welcoming, does it have special character and atmosphere and can that be ‘red’ in the school’s space.
On the second level, the physical game play elements of Spector have been design to be aesthetically pleasing, while each game play sub-set is design to be easy to understand and functional. 4 game pieces interpret some of inspector’s characteristic elements – hat, tie, googles, magnifying glass… 22 game cards are clearly colour and sign coded. This colour and code correspond to one sustainability topic throughout the game – on the cards, on the game board, on the evidence board. Cards for positive and negative comments, and ideas for improvement are clearly labelled with x sign, correct sign and an ‘cloud’ for improvement idea. In all game play testing sessions internationally, players commented the easiness of understanding of game pieces.
Through the game the focus is put on participation and inclusion of children in spheres of their life which impact them immensely, but on which they do not have any impact or say – learning, working and living in schools, improving those spaces to be more in accordance with their needs and likes, and teaching/learning about sustainability; which is usually presented as a top down regulatory policy, illustrated through ‘gloom and doom’ textbook scenarios.
Spector builds on the principle of inclusiveness and non-discrimination. Game gave voice to children over school space issues which is not usually done. Children of different age could express their opinion using tools which they felt the most comfortable with. By taking the role of inspector, pupils could express their opinion, while not explicitly using the phrase ‘I think.’ This took the pressure off pupils and liberated them to say what they thought. The role of the inspector was quite important for the younger pupils (age 11) especially in a setting (such as Serbia) where the student’s voice is rarely heard.
Spector builds on the cooperative model of power and democratic knowledge. The way participation is organized through the game did not resemble the traditional classroom - the atmosphere was relaxed, friendly and the players did not have to be seated all the time. Pupils loved roaming around the school, taking photos, and experiencing a dynamic way of revealing answers.
The pupils explored themes of sustainability that they themselves felt were important – not because a teacher told them so. They saw architects as equal colleagues. The hierarchies of expert-user, tutor-student, and adult-child were not simply reversed, but transformed through the game into relations of mutuality.
The basic framework of the game was first developed by the author in 2011. Since then, the game was piloted in several primary and secondary school and universities internationally – in the UK, Spain, Switzerland, and Serbia. The game was particularly developed for contexts where participation of users, especially children is not legally binding, such as Serbia. In both East and Western European contexts, the game proved to be very successful tool for pupils to voice their concerns about school sustainability issues and discuss them knowledgeably, in a documented fashion with other adult stakeholders; thus, being taken more seriously. The Spector provided a pupils with a framework for thinking and structuring arguments, as well as actions for improvement which pupils took out of the game into real life. In Serbia, after the game play pupils initiated a series of environment protection actions as a part of school’s ecology club, for which they won 1st award in yearly competition for greener schools.
After each game play we have saved some time to evaluate the game through interviews with game players. The interviews showed that Spector creates relaxed and friendly atmosphere, spurs motivation and enthusiasm, allows flexible learning at pupil’s own pace, improves understanding and discussion the decision consequences, transforms the roles of expert-user, teacher-pupil, and allows children to use previous experience and stimulated critical reflection.
Based on the interview comments the game has been reworked 3 times so far. The plan is that in the future the game author develops more systematic way of analysing game benefits and potentials for improvement with pedagogues and psychologists through an online questionnaire.
The first 2 version of the game was developed by the author aiming to involve separately children and teachers. Through the first few games plays the potential of the game to serve as a discussion tool between teachers and pupils became obvious. After creating a game to include both teachers and pupils, we concluded that in the dialog should be included the one designs schools – architects and urban planners; as well as the ones planning and budgeting school plans – local city planning and educational administration officials.
Since then the game was redeveloped in such a way that one and the same version of the game can be played by pupils only, or being joined by teachers, school management and maintenance personnel, architects and urban planners, and local city planning and education officials.
Hence, the game so far was tested only on a local level. More funds and further redevelopment of the game would be needed to include regional or even European stakeholders, e.g. through digitalisation of the game and placing it on an online platform.
Spector builds on the fields of architecture and urban planning, educational sciences and pedagogy and social sciences research methods. The authors of the game, architects and urban planners by education, realised how urgent is further developing evidence based design and embracing users perspective. Social sciences research methodology allowed the author to device methodologically sound process for involving users in discussing sustainability aspects, that can inform both architectural research and design. Additionally, building on gamification principles author saw that the whole process could be made ludic, fun and engaging for all participants. The challenge was that seeking out ‘deep’ information about space sand practices required long time, which schools usually do not have. In this moment the idea occurred that game could be developed to serve dual purpose – besides being a post-occupancy research tool for architects, the game could also be a teaching and learning tool for schools. Here both architect and pedagogues, explored and interpreted through the game the ideas od schools building a ‘3d textbook’ or ‘the third teacher’, where school building itself, installation and design features together with activities in them or related to them could serve as great educational experience. A multidisciplinary approach and collaboration between architecture, urban planning, social sciences research methods and pedagogy and education allowed creation of a multifaceted game tool that engages various stakeholders to speak on eye to eye level while yielding important benefits for each different type of players- be it understanding of performance or underperformance of school building in relation to sustainability for architects, voicing opinion overs schools sustainability issues and using the building as ‘3d textbook’ for teachers and pupils, or reaching consensus and understanding the importance of specific school expenditures for city or educational administration
Spector is simultaneously a post-occupancy research tool, teaching and learning tool, and communication and discussion tool. The most innovative characteristic of the game Spector is that it is one tool bringing together different players groups, with different interest revolving around sustainable school topics, which through joint exploration and discussions, bring out information that are significant and relevant for their own work – architects, urban planners and designers for designs and research, teachers and pupils for teaching and learning, and local administration for future planning. Besides the whole process is gamified, which makes it fun and engaging. While different tool and games for teaching and learning, planning and consensus reaching can be found, one amalgamating very successfully all these processes into one cannot.
As stated before the game was used internationally in different cultural contexts and institutional types. The game was so far played in the UK, Spain, Serbia, Brazil and Switzerland, in primary and secondary schools and universities. The game successfully engages children (8 and above, or younger with assistance of the older ones) both in primary and secondary schools, teachers and other nonteaching personnel (e.g. janitors, school managers, cleaning staff, pedagogues, psychologists) university students (so far in architecture, urban planning and pedagogy), university lecturers and professors, architectural and urban design studios and municipality/city officials from education and urban planning sectors.
The game in full could be used in any of there settings internationally. What it would only need is translation to the local language of game elements, if not played in English. Many game play sessions so far proved that.
The game as a participatory post-occupancy research tool is based on social sciences research method. Looked through this prism the game steps could be defined as participant’s observations, photo-expedition, semi-structured group interview with photo voice and mapping.
On the other hand, as the game is designed to act simultaneously a s a teaching and learning tool for pupils and teachers, the 4 game steps are built taking into consideration educational sciences - constructivist learning and experiential learning cycle by David A.Kolb. Hence step suspect is concrete experience - seeing reality as it is, understanding its richness and complexity (learning by observing the school space). Step inspect is reflective observation - acting upon specific question using tools and techniques (answering questions from the cards, commenting and taking corresponding photos as evidence). Step discuss - abstract conceptualisation -understanding information disregarding specific context (discussing the answers and explaining the meanings behind the photos). And final step detect - active experimentation -putting gained knowledge into practice (mapping photos and comments on the school plan and suggesting new ideas for improvement). Looked through this perspective learning through playing the Spector game enables critical reflection on transformed experience.
Working towards sustainable development goals is internationally a priority. While today top down strategies are giving questionable results, it seems that what we need are tools to priorities sustainable development goals, which are always context specific, and work on them. Secondly, what is needed are tools and processes which in truly participatory fashion include all affected groups, with an accent on vulnerable, excluded and marginalised – with children often ticking all three boxes. Thirdly we need a collaborative multidisciplinary effort engaging all spheres of life (school, work, family) and all spheres of education (formal, non-formal and informal). Being developed and redeveloped for over 12 years, Spector tackles all of the mentioned above, priding itself to be proved and inclusive participatory tool across international contexts.
So far Spector has been played in 5 different institutions where author was present 2 primary schools in Serbia, one primary school in Spain, one secondary school in the UK, one university in Switzerland, and several in primary schools in Brazil where author was not present. In 2 primary schools architecture students from a university in Serbia also participated as game masters.
As stated above, after each game play the success of the game was evaluated through interviews. These evaluations were reported in one journal article and one book chapter.
Additionally, with the help of educational psychologists the game was evaluated for its participatory, transformative, and emancipatory potential. The research showed that Spector and the game process invites participants transparently with enough information, gives them flexibility of participation, is inclusive and non-discriminatory, builds on cooperative model of power and democratic knowledge principles, supports critical thinking and prior knowledge, supports self-esteem, self-confidence, responsibility, teamwork and communication, encourages environmental stewardship and the development of sustainable strategies for future participatory initiatives.
As the interest for the game is steady, the lack of capital for its further development is preventing the game to be used more broadly. The plan for the game development is that the author teams up with pedagogues and psychologists to develop a sound evaluation tool which will be administered after game play for different play groups. Also, the idea is that the game is digitalised and transferred onto an internet platform. If awarded NEB funds, they will be used for these 2 purposes.
Spector supports embodying sustainability values through enabling players to discuss their own values with other stake holders and jointly priorities chosen ones relevant for their local context, supporting fairness by encouraging multi-generational dialogue and supporting nature by evaluating current and planning new green school spaces.
Spector supports embracing complexity in sustainability by enabling system thinking, critical thinking and problem solving by giving pupils a framework to analyse sustainable school aspects as holistic, all mutually interrelated, critically assess their school environment and practices, and based on that identify problems and formulate strategies to tackle them.
Spector supports envisioning sustainable futures by giving pupils a framework to argue and reach consensus on possible future solutions for improving sustainability of schools, and by supporting exploratory thinking where all players have to use prior knowledge from all speres of life (school, family, work..) and all educational spheres (formal, non-formal and informal).
Spector supports acting for sustainability as it gives pupils a framework to take out of the game to structure their thinking and actions outside the game. The game provides pupils with an opportunity to see who outside of their school life has an impact on it, and include those actors to negotiate schools sustainable aspects with pupils. The same framework has proven to help pupils structure their action collective towards some of the sustainability topics, after the game play.
