Abstract:
Sociability of educational spaces is crucial to the quality of education because a major part of learning takes place through attending public spaces, acting in spaces, social interaction with peers, and collective life in public spaces. Sociability provides for the users’ social needs. The present study seeks to explore the development of sociability in educational spaces through increasing opportunities for social interaction in educational buildings, particularly in their shared spaces. The hypothesis is that human, activity and environmental factors stand in a significant relationship with sociability of the students at the School of Art and Architecture, Bu-Ali Sina University of Hamedan, Iran. Underlying this study is a descriptive-analytical methodology that was applied, in form of a case study, in the School of Art and Architecture of Bu-Ali Sina University. The data were collected by using library research, interview, field observation, and case study. In so doing, a survey was performed by administering a questionnaire to the subjects, i.e. sample students from among the entire population of the students at the school. The correlation of the data was then analyzed by SPSS software and influence of each variable, on the development of sociability in educational spaces, was determined. According to the findings, from among the three variables, the psychosocial characteristics of the users, which tend to be the most influential and physical features of the public environment, are the least influential factors. Also the results of correlation tests show that psychosocial factors and physical factors are directly correlated with activity-related factors.
Machine summary:
The hypothesis is that human, activity and environmental factors stand in a significant relationship with sociability of the students at the School of Art and Architecture, Bu-Ali Sina University of Hamedan, Iran.
The notion of social interaction brings about various issues such as sociability, collective life, gathering spaces, environmental and human factors, as well as public human-built environments.
Holland, Clark, Katz, and Peace argue that social interactions in public built environments are influenced by furniture, designs and patterns, lighting, building materials, sounds, and adjacent functions (Mardomi & Ghamari, 2011).
For Salehinia and Memariyan, synomorphy between the psychosocial characteristics of the users and the physical features of a public space affect social interactions in educational environments.
Sociability Factors (Salehinia & Memarian, 2009) In a study of the components of collective life and the spatial factors which are most influential on the quality of sociability in public spaces, Charkhchiyan and Daneshpour (2007) suggest the four following categories: 1.
Features of Sociability (Charkhchian & Daneshpour, 2007) (View the image of this page) Based on what has been so far discussed, human, environmental, as well as activity-related factors may improve social interaction and, thus, sociability in a space.
Population and Sample In this study, which is a survey, the aim is to measure the influence of human, activity-related (functional), and environmental (physical) factors on the sociability of spaces.
The Stages of Socialization in a Hierarchial Order of Importance Pearson correlation coefficient was used to study the relationship among the main factors of the quality of public spaces in the School of Art and Architecture (Table 7).