Development and Implementation of an Environmental Evaluation and Redesign Process for a High School Science Department

This paper examines the first year of activities of a project of environmental analysis and design being performed in the Science Department of Oak Grove High School, San Jose, California. This project is an attempt to develop a process by which environmental users may design, implement, and evaluate experiments in improving the fit of activities and environment to the tasks of teaching and learning. Although this process is cyclical in the form described by James Boyce as "empirical evaluation," this paper describes only the first phase. In this first phase the data base for future comparisons and for in use modifications to instructional programs and spaces was established. The cycling process is triggered whenever an experiment is prepared by the Science Department staff.