When we asked Stephen Heppell what he’d get rid of in next generation learning spaces, one of the things he suggested was instant coffee. “We learn from sport that the aggregation of little marginal gains makes a big difference” he said. “If we want everyone in our schools to be the best they can possibly be, every little detail matters. Teachers are scarce and valuable professionals: they deserve decent coffee.” It wasn’t quite what we had in mind, though – we were thinking of practical and physical things in the classroom (and he helped us put that together too). So here’s what we think you ought to be giving up in 2018 and beyond.
1 Seating plans
Seating plans smack of control over learning. When we dictate at which desk each of the learners in our class sits, we’re removing agency from them (and are very possibly taking away much more than we’re bargaining for). Because if we want to develop responsible and autonomous learners yet the first thing we do is to remove their ability to decide where to sit, we’re giving them very mixed messages: we’re certainly telling them we don’t trust them. Allowing learners that simple act of coming into a room and deciding where to sit sets a very clear precedent – one where they ARE trusted to take control of their learning, and from that, much will follow, if we but allow it. And this all presupposed that learners will occupy just one space within the classroom throughout the whole learning period rather than move around during them (even though the research tells us movement is linked to cognition) – that just one space will support everything they need to do, whether that’s collaborating with other learners, reflecting, experimenting or presenting. And it’s the same with …
2 Teacher desks
Nicholas Provenzano, the high school English teacher from Detroit who tweets and blogs under the name The Nerdy Teacher got rid of his in 2015. For him it started with the simple question “is this room designed for me or for my students?” as he later wrote in a post for Edutopia. “I wanted the students to start feeling that it was their classroom and I was part of it” he continued. And he’s not alone. That same year, according to The New York Post Donna Connelly, Principal of the Spuyten Duyvil School in the Bronx, ordered her teachers to give up their desks: “it’s the 21st century” she said, “you don’t need desks” Removing them, according to Prakash Nair of designers, Fielding Nair International “decentralizes the classroom” but with them, some have gone so far as to admit that learning is arranged around it. And all too frequently no more than a dumping ground anyway, let alone reinforcing the one-way didactic approach to content delivery.
3 Fixed teaching walls
And so too, the “front of the classroom” created by fixed teaching walls that frequently dictate a “Dick Turpin” (stand and deliver) teaching style. The single point of focus reduces pedagogic opportunities and is cognitively inefficient, because, according to Stephen Heppell’s website the diversity of context needed to cement memory and structure taxonomies of understanding is absent and offers a (literal) barrier to effective team teaching and collaboration. Instead, Stephen suggests, there should be multiple displays, and where possible they should be mobile. As an example, Wapping High School in London (see volume 3.2) designed all its learning spaces with mobile presentation and a power and data infrastructure that enabled them to be positioned in any of three locations in classrooms – centrally on the short wall (for instruction), centrally on the long wall, for more collegiate learning – discussions and debates, and in a corner creating an intimate study space.
4 Four walls
“We asked ourselves what is a classroom?” Di Pumphrey of West Thornton Academy told us when we asked her the rationale behind why she’d created large learning studios there. “What does it have to look like for learning to take place?” she continued, “How can we encourage children to take more ownership of their learning?” So they removed the walls and created a more flexible learning environment and the results were remarkable - beyond just the visual feeling of light and space. Children and adults had more control over their space and could adapt it to suit their own needs, for their own learning. It became a learning community where collaboration, support and timely intervention became the norm- for both children and adults. The classroom is no longer just the teachers’ domain, it is a shared learning space. “We are still evolving our practice” Di accepted … “learning about what really makes the difference - but we are certainly not putting children back in a box!”
5 ICT suites
“Schools should be ditching their rows and rows of computers organised in separate ICT Suites because technology in schools should be like electricity: always there” Gary Spracklen, Headteacher, and Member of the UK Government’s Education Technology Action Group says. “You wouldn’t expect to walk into a school and find no electricity in any one of the classrooms. Likewise, this should be the case with technology. Always there... always on... always available” ICT Suites always best served the needs of ICT Technicians before learners, keeping a resource locked behind closed doors, where every effort is made to make every device the same. “But it does not reflect the world of work now, nor does it represent the future” Gary continued, “We live in a device-agnostic world so we should be teaching our learners to be confident across multiple-platforms and should promote a strong BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture”. Gary argues that this should be done, “while providing our young people with access to the professional tools such as 3D printing and AI that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. By moving away from ICT Suites, a school will instantly improve the conditions for learning and promote a stronger, more collaborative approach to using technology to aid learning” he argues.