Designs on Learning (3) - Re-thinking the learning process

I came across this YouTube clip from the Ordrup School in Gentofte, Denmark. In the clip the Chairman of the School Board reflects on the fact that the school was a product of the old society, in which classrooms where seen to be production units where teachers pushed the knowledge and wisdom out to the students. The school redesigned the learning spaces to support an approach to learning that reflects a contemporary society and how we young people engage in that society.
The challenge is to first rethink the learning process and the consequent design of the learning spaces.

Rethinking the Learning Process
Recently I was visiting a school where the principal and his leadership team were keen to explore what is possible for the learning spaces and for learning.
The conversation covered a wide area of thinking. Three key things seemed to emerge:

1. Personalising the learning for students
2. Ensuring deep learning
3. Teacher learning to support innovation and transformation of practice to personalise the learning for deep learning.

The school was left with an interesting challenge through which to explore key concepts and to engage students, staff and the broader community. The challenge was to explore what might be possible.

What might schools look like if they didn't look like traditional schools?

What would learning look like if it didn't look like it presently does?

How might students respond to this?

What might they design?

Designing Learning Spaces

It's funny how things sort of converge! Today I was in a meeting discussing the design of staff spaces to support teacher learning and collaboration. The regulations seemed to dominate the thinking as to why things couldn't be done differently.

Upon getting home I opened up my email to find an email from Futurelab, a UK non-profit organisation that explores innovation in education. The email indicated that in January 2008 Futurelab conducted a workshop in which particpants explored personalising learning and school design.

CARTOON PASTED FROM <http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/>

The workshop explored

• The biggest barriers
• Principles of personalisation
• Technologies and future learning opportunities
• Student voice
• Generated a set of outcomes of the workshop.

The summary document of the workshop, Learning spaces and personalisation workshop outcomes, makes for an interesting read.

Further information about this workshop can be found at the Themes section on learning spaces http://www.futurelab.org.uk/themes/learning_spaces at Futurelab.

Futurelab has also produced a more comprehensive report on learning spaces, Opening education: What if … re-imagining learning spaces.

In addition, the blog FLUX is running a themed week this week (9-16 May 2008) on Learning Spaces. Entries include:

• Tomorrow's schools more than just learning spaces
• Personalising space and school redesign
• A 'practical tool' for redesigning learning spaces?

Design on Learning - Design for Learning

Moving beyond school design that is limited to removing walls between classrooms deserves some serious considerations.

How the spaces for learning are conceptualised requires some thinking about the possibilities in schools for learning in the 21st Century. So often those involved in the design process look at other schools which, more often than not, are bounded by existing concepts of school and schooling.

What if …

• Our concept of school was bounded by a view of the school as a studio rather than the factory?


• Those involved in the design process visited other sites of learning, such as museums, art galleries, workshops, studios and kept away from schools?


• Students were actively engaged in the design process and conceptualising what spaces designed for learning might look like?


• Our school sites were conceptualised as villages of learning?


• Students worked with designers in exploring the challenges of designing spaces, developing concepts and engaging in following-up on the development of the learning spaces?

Some interesting work has been occurring in England by the Sorrell Foundation through a project called joinedupdesignforschools.

These following links from TeacherTV are worth checking out.

Series on joinedupdesignforschools

This series features six schools which have successfully participated in the Joinedupdesignforschools project. Pupils have the major say in how an aspect of their school's environment is improved.
Pasted from <http://www.teachers.tv/series/4242>

Video: joinedupdesignforschools - a place to chill

Architect Phin Manasseh works with pupils at Mounts Bay School in Cornwall to create an inspirational space with a social purpose but where learning takes place too.

Involving pupils in this way is a key part of the Joinedupdesignforschools project.
The brainchild of The Sorrell Foundation, the project gives pupils a major say in how an aspect of their school's environment is improved. The pupils are the clients, briefing designers who produce designs for their approval.

Phin Manasseh spoke of the success of the project. He said: "If all clients were like this, we?d have very different results."

The Joinedupdesignforschools project follows a four stage pattern:

• The challenge
• The brief
• The conversation
• The concept

A follow-up then looks at the school's success in finding the money to turn the creative designs into reality.
Pasted from <http://www.teachers.tv/video/3456>

All at sea in possibilities

The last few weeks have been intense with learning for me. Being a person who likes to explore connections and possibilities as threads emerge means that my mind has been and remains all over the place. All of a sudden "being lost in my own thoughts" makes sense!!

So what has been pre-occupying my thinking?


Students and their learning

• The importance of knowing the learner and expecting all to learn at a deep level
• The possibilities that exist for schools as we understand more of the nature of the learner and learning
• Shifting from the atomised pieces of teaching (ritualised teaching) to opening up possibilities for the learner through deep learning, thinking and creativity.

Teachers and their teaching

• Why finding excuses in the kids for why kids can't learn is so ingrained in teaching
• Depersonalising the teaching from the teacher as a person and linking teaching with learning.

Designing learning spaces

• Understanding the learning environment as the "third teacher
• The need to have principles of learning to shape and inform the design of learning spaces
• Does the space shape the practice?

Teaching as the learning profession

• Building the learning within professional teams to deal with the complexities of teaching, not just training for delivery to achieve results
• Teachers' agency and teachers leading learning across the school
• Teacher inquiry and knowledge building and the place and nature of networks
• Learning conversation that capture new learning and how to further develop and share the learning
• Identifying what's worth sharing with others in the profession.

Transforming schools for 21st century

• The tension between developing goals for schools and keeping an open-mind for unforeseen possibilities
• The invitation to engage the imagination to reconceptualise schooling
• Moving beyond best practice leading the rest to developing next practice.

Over the next little while I'll muse more publicly here about these, but would welcome any thoughts.

Designs on Learning

Recently I was part of a conversation about a school building project. The design of the learning spaces is quite exciting, doing away with traditional classrooms as isolated boxes. The design has curved shaped walls defining a number of spaces opening out into a large central area.

In the course of the conversation I was struck by the danger of replicating existing structures and places within this new design. It was stated that a desk for every child is required so that the children can learn to write.

So there is the new design, recent technologies and traditional classroom furniture; and low and behold, before too long we have the familiar and recognisable classroom.

It was put to me that the school leadership needed to see what was possible elsewhere so that they could imagine school in new ways, rather than recreating what was in new spaces.

Of course there are schools that are exploring new ways of doing schooling - not just in design of buildings, but in the design of learning.

Of interest is what is happening at Wooranna Park Public School. The school has designed learning spaces within the shell of a traditional school. The school describes itself as having

... endeavoured to create a learning environment for students that prepares them to live in a rapidly changing world, caters for their personal needs and passions, and excites their thirst for learning.

Another school that has the most amazing design is the Hellerup Skole in Denmark.

What both these schools have in common is a recognition that before considering the design of schools serious consideration needs to be given to the principles of learning that should inform and shape what the learning looks like. The learning spaces should be designed to support the desired learning.

This caused me to ask, "If we were to do school that wasn't to look like school, what might it look like?" This, I think, would be an interesting area to investigate with students.

This another clip that is provocative in opening up thinking: