Studies, as well as experience, show that learning space plays an important part in children's education. The experts believe it has the role of the third teacher, which is an important and responsible role. This article stresses the importance of constructed learning space and focuses on physical parameters providing residential comfort – heat comfort, light comfort, acoustic comfort and the air quality of internal spaces. The assessed parameters of comfort have been gaining importance in the last ten years based on numerous studies proving their significance and particularly revealing the negative impact on children’s health and wellbeing, but also their school success and progress. On the long path of education from kindergarten to university, a child spends a significant amount of time in school, therefore the negative potential of constructed environment should not be overlooked. The architect is the designer of the space and therefore has an influence on the quality of the constructed environment in the early stages of planning – the functional design of the building structure has to provide daylight and at the same time prevent the space from overheating, it has to provide acoustic comfort, the selected materials of the building’s envelope and furniture must not emit harmful substances, and the inbuilt technological systems have to provide an adequate temperature regulating and continuous air exchange.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3694212
The traditional childcare space and collective learning have been replaced by new innovative pedagogical approaches based on recognising a child as an individual with their own creative potential. This generates changes in facility-design standards, which require bigger surfaces. Facilities need to be flexible and diverse. Apart from architecture and pedagogy, the design of educational facilities also includes experts in the fields of medicine, psychology, landscape architecture, economics, architectural technology.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3694468
Modern learning space in preschool should allow children various activities and learning experiences both in the internal and in the external learning space. In the text we first highlight some pedagogues and didacticians who in their discussions also oriented themselves to larning space, and after that two reform pedagogies, the Montessori pedagogy and the Reggio Emilia concept. The text concludes with a presentation of the example of a sensory room in the preschool in Postojna, which represents an innovative approach by incorporating sensory elements into the space and encouraging the active—and for a pre-school child natural—learning by playing. From international and domestic practice of learning communication skills in the internal and external space of the preschol, we highlight some elements of innovative learning approaches that refer to team work of different occupational profiles, to pleasant, comfortable, and aesthetic arrangement of the preschool, to the flowability and the possibility of access to all spaces for various users, to the interconnection of the interior and exterior spaces of the preschool, to cross-disciplinary learning through project work based on diverse materials and involving all senses of children or multisensory learning, and, finally, on documenting the development of children, including through the use of ICT.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1540659652