More fabulous learning spaces

The space in which a child learns is important. If a school gets it wrong, learning can be constrained or even completely stifled. I remember the dire environment that was provided for me as a kid in one particular school. The room had bare floorboards, and the desks were fixed to the floor. The classroom echoed with every footstep, and there was no central heating. All we had was one fireplace which was never lit, due to 'health and safety' issues. The toilets were in a block across the playground, and we avoided going there because they were exposed to the elements. We therefore made sure we didn't drink at all during the school day, so we wouldn't need to find our way across to the toilet block. We were often cold and thirsty, because the environment dictated it. It didn't lead to very good learning outcomes. Recent research has shown that drinking water regularly actually improves concentration and focus. It's often the simple things that improve the learning environment, and as Stephen Heppell says, better school toilets = better results.

Last year I wrote about  some fabulous learning spaces I had seen while visiting schools in New Zealand. I wrote about the idea of knocking down walls and joining three classrooms together to provide more circulating space for students. At Albany Senior High School in Auckland, three classes are conducted next to each other, with students given the freedom to move between the classes as they wish. Last week I heard Stephen Heppell talk about another version of this, which he called 'Super Classes' where three classes join together for one lesson, and the three teachers team teach. The lead teacher (or narrator) is responsible for conducting the session, whilst teacher 2 (the 'breakdown engineer') offers the intervention when students are struggling, and teacher 3 provides differentiated intervention for those learners who require it. Conducting classes in this way drives the session forward with fewer stops and starts. Teachers can focus on their individual roles and in so doing maintain the impetus of the lesson without being sidetracked to respond to the needs of individual learners.

In Australia, Stephen Harris, principal of the Sydney Centre for Innovations in Learning has devised a range of metaphors that describe different kinds of activities that can take place in shared learning spaces.  Such space and activity juxtapositions rely extensively on the teacher's willingness to be flexible and adaptable to change and responsive to needs as they arise, but also tap into the huge potential of young people's innate ability to be agile and adept at using new technologies. Schools are often designed by architects and designers who may have spent little time in school since their childhood days. Getting those who actually use the school every week - the students - to design them in conjunction with their teachers seems to be a much better strategy and might lead to creative learning spaces.

It's clear that learning spaces are a vitally important component of the school to get right. If we don't provide the best possible spaces that are conducive to learning, we are letting the children down. It's not just what we provide in schools that make a difference, but how we provide it.

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More fabulous learning spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.