The Future of Education

Increasing evidence points to a relationship between physical space and pedagogical design in increasing student engagement and performance (Barrett, P., Zhang, Y., Davies, F., and Barrett, L. (2015)). As our school transitions pedagogical practices (e.g., increasing student-driven, problem-based learning) concurrent to the design and development of a new facility, we face real challenges where individual teacher instructional preferences converge with design demands meant to enhance the learning experience. We have been working with teachers to modify instructional practices that reflect the direction of the school. At the same time, we have been facilitating conversations with students, parents, and other stakeholders on the overall design of the building as well as the design of individual learning spaces (i.e., classrooms). Ministry of Education guidelines are clear in the allowable space per student enrolled. Throughout much of the world, this leads to the egg carton or boxes-in-boxes approach to school design. That is, each classroom is of a like size and fits nicely into the overall building. In this way, each classroom is able to accommodate the same number of students. We wanted our middle and high school facility to better reflect our determination to create more experience-based learning with consideration for the research on physical design and evidence of changes to teaching and learning that better reflect the shifts in school and workforce development. Thus, began a journey in which we needed to determine what practices we had that reflected our ideals and what practices remained aspirational, about which we still needed to be mindful. We needed to map this to the work of the designers and architects. And we needed a way to make it all work together. Specifically, we needed to overcome the challenge of the teachers waiting for the new building to change practices and determine how to change practices in our currently occupied space.  Our journey has included bottom-up intervention strategies to engage students, parents and teachers together in professional learning capacities with the intent of expanding opportunities for students and parents to become active participants in shaping their learning spaces and communities. We have expanded opportunities for students and parents to participate by offering ideas and sharing concerns. This session will explore the ongoing tension between existing practices and expectations, aspirational practices and expectations, and designing spaces to meet both. Moreover, we will have the participants work through some of the same exercises we asked of ourselves and our team to understand how space can shape practices and how practices can shape spaces.

Keywords: Flexible learning environments;

References: 
[1] P. Barrett, Y. Zhang, F. Davies, and L. Barrett (2015). Clever Classrooms: Summary report of the HEAD project. University of Saldford, Manchester, UK.