Quebec Educational Program, Pedagogical Approaches, and Design of Educational Spaces

This study explores the major “design issues” raised by the goals, missions, and pedagogical approaches of educational programs and tries to link pedagogical approaches and the architectural design of educational spaces. The scope of this research is the latest Quebec Educational Program (QEP) published in 2005–2007. Donna Duerk’s issue-based architectural programming is used as a research approach to investigate issues and requirements for the design of educational spaces. This approach is a systematic method of inquiry that defines the requirements for a successful project, and it is used to develop a model for the design issues related to the goals, missions, and pedagogical approaches of the QEP for secondary school design in Quebec. The following ten major design issues extracted from the literature review are considered as the basis for the analysis of the QEP: health and comfort, flexibility, technology, efficiency, accessibility, safety and security, pedagogy and space, aesthetics, building condition, and school size. The latest QEP is analyzed to verify which of these design issues are related to the goals and approaches of this program and based on the issue-based programming approach, the final model of design issues related to the QEP is developed.