ABSTRACT
Architecture, broadly conceived, might be thought of as a discipline concerned with designing the built environment to provoke and shape particular societal reactions. Enlightenment French thinkers, for example, appealed to the classical forms of Ancient Greece and Rome to ensure their buildings were both coherent and conveyed a particular message to the populace. Prisons, with narrow fenestration and chains carved in stone over doorways were designed to provoke senses of terror in the general public, whereas schools of surgery made use of vaulted ceilings and skylights in an attempt to appeal to the divinely inspired new knowledge of medical sciences. Teacher education, broadly conceived, might likewise be characterized as an exercise in curricular architecture in which politicians, superintendents, university presidents, education professors, and the teachers’ federation have sought to design an environment in which certain “teacher-like” dispositions, skills, and ways of being are both tacitly and explicitly encouraged.
