Introduction to Part IV: Teacher Practices

This final section of Transitions focuses on arguably the most important element of 'successful' ILEs—the teacher. Within educational research alone, and when looking at a hundred years or more of research into quality schooling, most arguments attract a counter-perspective. Interestingly, on one factor virtually everyone agrees; the teacher has the greatest positive impact on the quality of student learning. For this reason, we use the preceding sections to lead us into discussions about how teachers occupy and use the educational space.

Pedarchitecture: Which Learning Environments for the Personalisation of Teaching and Learning? An Educational Architecture for the Schools of the Future

This project investigates how to overcome traditional learning environment’s rigidity; those established practices that may hinder full use of what we might call new learning environments. It addresses how teachers adapt their teaching to changing learning environments, what impact new educational spaces have on teachers and students, how to organise students with different criteria, and how learning environments can be redesigned in old schools with limited investments. The research studies four schools: in Denmark, the Hellerup Folkeskole in Gentofte and the Ørestad Gymnasium in Copenhagen; in Italy, the Enrico Fermi High School in Mantua and IC3 Piersanti Mattarella secondary first grade in Modena. New learning environments are intended to enhance teacher collaboration and stimulate the exchange of new teaching methods, enabling learning personalisation. This is often facilitated by team teaching, which in this chapter is seen as a “bridge-culture” concept, offering a wider vision including structural and organisational details. The chapter discusses how this strategy lead to students improved learning skills, them taking on greater personal responsibility and displaying aptitude to study in different ways. In this sample of “architecture feeds pedagogy” schools, some key concepts are explored that might guide future learning environments design: readability, “semantic-topical”, flexibility, invisible pedagogy and affordances.

Introduction to Part II: Inhabiting

This section presents research in inhabiting new learning environments. The topic is introduced, and a brief review is given for each chapter in the following section.

The Gadfly: A Collaborative Approach to Doing Data Differently

The Gadfly first materialised as a provocative data performance at the Transitions Research Symposium held at The University of Melbourne in June 2017. The figuration of gadfly in the title shapes the figure of the researcher as (bothersome) questioner that provokes critical dialogue about the assumptions underpinning our own research practices and learning environments research more generally. This figuration provides us an entry point into working data through approaches offered by new materialist and post-qualitative research methods. The resulting data performance came together as a collaborative experiment inhabiting the in-between spaces of researchers, participants, research contexts, and ‘data’ initially generated in a Taekwondo training assemblage. Our collaborative approach involved an intra-active process as a way of doing data differently. Informing our process are concepts of intra-action, assemblage, affect, and sticky data.

Co-creating Innovative Learning Environments: LEaRN’s Decade of Discovery

This forward provides an overview of earlier LEaRN work carried out leading up to this book. It also explores some of the pedagogy and spatial tropes which have emerged over past decades. Whilst there have been many explorative innovations over that time, very few have been scalable and sufficiently resilient to dislodge the primordial hold that the Industrial Age classroom has taken in school design for over a century. Many attempts have been made to align pedagogy and space, but the classical classroom learning container remains in large part due to teacher mindsets. The Transitions suggested in these chapters may well be a seminal moment in the history of school design as the ILETC project nears its final stages of discovery.

Envisaging Teacher Spatial Competency Through the Lenses of Situated Cognition and Personal Imagination to Reposition It as a Professional Classroom Practice Skill

This chapter examines the complex phenomenon of teachers’ spatial interactions in their learning environments. Its goal is to examine concepts and theories that might inform a working conceptual framework. Building on recent studies that question how school environments can influence teacher behaviour, spatial concepts as well as architectural and cognitive psychology theories are examined to explore the dynamic and mutually dependent relationship between teachers and learning spaces. A new concept of ‘situated environmental imagination’ is devised as a conceptual explanation for teacher spatial competency; it also provides practitioners with the means to evaluate and observe space-related skills in classroom action settings. This approach pursues a non-linear understanding and analysis of space and teacher practice that blends architectural and educational perspectives, resulting in an argument for the inclusion of spatial competency as an important professional skill that has the potential to enhance student learning.

What Does Teaching and Learning Look like in a Variety of Classroom Spatial Environments?

The very nature of what constitutes an effective learning environment is undergoing substantial re-imagination. Authors have suggested that the affordances of existing learning spaces, often termed conventional or traditional classrooms, is limited and constrains the possible pedagogies available to teachers. Architects, authors and governments have put forward innovative learning environments (ILEs) as a better alternative. ILEs provide affordances thought to be somewhat better at providing to students learning needs than traditional classrooms, particularly in terms of creative and critical thinking, and collaborative and communicative workers. However, there is little evidence available to show of either spatial type (traditional classroom or ILE) performs pedagogically to either hinder or support the desired approach/es to teaching and learning being sought by current educational policies. One could suggest that a populistic narrative often drives the growing investment in new school learning spaces, facilitated by a vacuum of credible evidence of their impact. This paper will report findings from a three-year study that tracked the practices over time of secondary school Engineering, Mathematics and Science teachers (n = 23) as they occupied two quite dissimilar spatial layouts. The Linking Pedagogy, Technology, and Space (LPTS) observational metric, with its provision of instantaneous quantitative visual analysis, was used to track their practice, and student learning, in a variety of spatial layouts. Subsequent analysis identified broad trends within the data to identify those factors, spatial, subject or confounding teacher factors, which influenced student and teacher activities and behaviours. Importantly, it presented new evidence that works against the current, overt focus on contemporary spatial design. It suggests that greater emphasis on unpacking, and then developing, the mediating influence of teacher spatial competency (how, when and why one uses the given affordances of space for pedagogical gain) is required for any space to performance pedagogically.

Design with Knowledge—Light in Learning Environments

A range of artificial lighting characteristics have been found to influence our visual and cognitive capabilities, mood, motivation and/or (social) behaviour—all affecting how we (academically) perform. One such influential characteristic is spatial contrast, or the way light is distributed in space causing a pattern of light and darkness. This study looks at if and how spatial contrast influences pupil behaviour, and specifically their ability to concentrate. We first explored whether variances in pupil noise, physical activity and mood, which have been found to affect concentration, occur when exposed to either a high or a low spatial contrast in their learning environment. Preliminary data from field experiments in a primary school indicates towards decreased noise levels and improved environmental satisfaction when a high spatial contrast condition is present. This implies improved environmental circumstances to concentrate. Further research to confirm this assumption will be undertaken.

Introduction to Part I: Change and Risk

This section presents research in managing change and risk inherent in the introduction of new learning environments. The topic is introduced, and a brief review is given for each chapter in the following section.

Exploring the Relationships Between Learning Space and Student Learning in Higher Education: A Comparative Case Study in China

The landscape of learning space design in higher education is undergoing a transformation. During the past decade, flexible, innovative learning spaces have been established around the world in response to the changing perspectives on how knowledge is discovered and what constitutes important and appropriate higher education in contemporary society.