Education Architecture Archives

Reflections on Transition C – Final Thoughts

TomEducation Architecture, FeaturedOctober 5, 2019February 26, 2024Leave a Comment

The conference has finished, and you might have already read some of my reflections in my weekly newsletter. In this post, I wanted to explore those ideas in a little more depth and share a few other insights from Day 3 of the Transitions19 conference in Melbourne.

(You can also read my day one and two reflections)

The conference was exploring three questions:

What are innovative learning environments (ILE)?
How do they function?
How do we know what impact they can have on our teaching and student learning?

(These would be a great set of questions to start a discussion in a PLC or staff meeting.)

I notice that my reflection and critique from the conference is evenly focused on the content and the experience itself. I need to share what I know about designing and facilitating learning experiences more openly.

Jayne Heath, the Principal from the Australian Science and Maths School, shared they have been on the journey for over 17 years. I wanted to know from Jayne what she wishes she knew back then? And how she thinks we might better capture and share the lessons learned? Schools, leaders and teachers should not be isolated in their projects as there is lots of experience to share.

The conference as an experiment

A great insight I took away was from Colin Campbell about the increase in our cognitive load from high ambient noise levels. There was a noisy air system in one of the conference spaces which served as a good prop.

Colin also measured the sound levels of each area during the conference (part of the research vibe of the event) and presented these back to the audience. Here is an excellent reading about cognitive load from CESE in NSW.

I enjoyed learning more about how the conference spaces and the way we used them held some insights. Environmental factors such as acoustics and temperature play an essential role.

Previously I have been critical of a conference on learning spaces ironically not applying what they were espousing. This conference still suffered a little from that, more on this later in the post, but the insights gathered from how we used the space was fascinating.

Acoustic design insights from @edu_colin #transitions19 pic.twitter.com/ErBsPnYWMP
— Tom Barrett (@tombarrett) October 4, 2019

We were asked to consider five sets of typologies of learning environments judging the spaces we were in during our workshops.

Space / Acoustics / Furniture / Pedagogy / Technology

Click through the images below.

Looking back at the modes of learning in the Pedagogy set makes me wonder whether we are too general with this group. Is it me or are these not actually pedagogies?

Take Dialogic Pedagogy – learning through talk. This pedagogy could exist within each of the other modes apart from the independent setting. I want to explore more of this in the future – so parking this for now. Needless to say, it seems like a gap.

The longer conference format

Over three whole days, we had plenty of opportunities to meet, speak and chat with lots of different people. The “coffee break” probably defines my conference experiences over the years.

With a more extended programme, I was able to meet new people and revisit conversations we started on the first day. I was also able to think out loud with some emerging professional connections.

The length of the conference allowed for new connections that might not have been made had it been shorter.

The flexibility of the conference space

I enjoyed seeing how the environment we were in at Studio 5 in Melbourne University, adapted for the final day of the conference. The large gathering space for the whole group had transformed back to a smaller group teaching area.

You can see the whole group layout here, with a large screen and lots of different seating in a rough round.

And you can see the same space changed to a learning space with small group tables and multiple screens.

The number of different layouts space can change into, and the ease it can be changed should be something we explore more. It might be a new metric we start to consider – how many different ways this space can adapt over time.

This reminds me of this time-lapse from Stanford University’s d.school studio space. See if you can spot how many different ways space is configured — a flexible learning space in action.

The map is not the territory

Korzybski introduced and popularized the idea that the map is not the territory. In other words, the description of the thing is not the thing itself. The model is not reality. The abstraction is not the abstracted. edThis has enormous practical consequences.

(The Map is Not the Territory – Farnam Street)

When it comes to the typologies we have for learning environments – see above – the value of using them may well be shortlived. They instigate thinking and provoke reflection about what we have and where we might go. But the vast intricacy and nuance of each learning context soon make them a little redundant.

As I mentioned before I think the precision is a little lacking too when we look at the Pedagogies set — too much abstraction, perhaps.

This was borne out in a way through the experience of the conference. In the large space, the whole conference was arranged in the round. But the approach to presenting in that space had barely changed. We had a spatial layout that allowed us to see each other and interact – but we didn’t get the chance to do that.

Across nearly all of the whole group presentations, the pedagogy was surprisingly singular. Sharing ideas through story, presenting and talking through slides. I think I was only asked to discuss an idea once with someone next to me.

Find a Door That Fits Us Both

The research into the impact of learning spaces on teachers and student outcomes is an ongoing journey, and we heard of the history over the last twelve years of projects. But I have been pondering on why teachers and school leaders still find the domain of learning environments research more difficult to access.

Our fluency and literacy, when it comes to the research into teaching and learning, are seemingly pretty strong. There is still work to do – only yesterday I saw something in a school about the neuromyth “learning styles”. Certainly stronger than a decade ago. But is this true of research into learning environments?

I think this is attributed to the lack of quality studies into innovative learning environments – hence the intense focus on research and emerging insights. However, I believe it is the second-order effect of this. Teachers are not creating commentary about the science we can access. There are not enough blogs and teacher discussions into what is working and what doesn’t.

It is fine to have PhDs creating a body of emerging knowledge, but we also need a broader ecology of social commentary! You can tell I have been at a research conference for too long! We need more practitioners (educators and designers) talking about the studies out there and sharing that thinking. The lack of that behaviour is what makes learning spaces research distinct from the science of teaching and learning.

Final Takeaways

We do not share the same pedagogical language.
Modelling how spaces can flex to different layouts and learning modes is a powerful way to learn.
The dialogue “below the line” or on a digital space is a critical conference space to consider.
Teachers have latent spatial competency and understanding of affordances of space.
Prototyping needs to be an ongoing part of the design process, not just a single stage.
More of us need to share our understanding of learning environments.
The journey into researching the impact of learning environments has been a long one and continues now into looking at Community and the impact on student outcomes.
Ambient acoustic levels increase our cognitive load.
There was hardly any reference to the outdoors and biophilic design.
What are innovative learning environments for students with complex needs?

You can see my thinking from day one and day two. There are some future posts I want to follow up with – especially around the precision of our pedagogical language.

Thanks for exploring these reflections – in the comments below please share any questions or thoughts you have.

Reflections on Transition B

TomEducation Architecture, FeaturedOctober 4, 2019Leave a Comment

I am reloading for another day at the conference, the final day of the Transitions19 Conference in Melbourne. I had better share some ideas before I get started, clear the decks and allow some new thinking to prosper today.

Here are my reflections from Day 2 of the conference:

The balance of the day was much better for me than day one. The balance was between the different modes of learning and thinking – it was much more satisfying, and it helped me to stay focused.
More specifically, the day involved:

presentations of about fifteen minutes each (sitting, listening, processing, tweeting)
workshops (sitting, movement, chatting, discussion, individual time for reflection, small group collaboration)
morning tea + lunch (sitting, movement, talking, discussion, connecting+reconnecting with people)
a bus ride to a school visit (sitting, chatting, conversation, individual time for reflection)
school visits – children learning (sitting, talking quietly as we explored the school, observation of learning taking place,
personal time for reflection, a small presentation (more sitting, listening, processing, tweeting)

The provocation of visiting an active school with all the lovely noise of teaching and learning was quite comforting. It helped centre me on the reason we are all trying to improve learning environments. This helped me experience a much more balanced conference day.

What do we notice?

It is rare to have the chance to do a learning environments school visit with children and staff there. There is so much more we can learn from being in an environment that is active. I was in the first group visiting, and I am sure we all learned much more from the experience than visiting without staff and students present.

How might we capture, share and make accessible more of this ambient insight from site visits?

During the school visit, I asked one of the architects who was with me, ‘What do you notice when you look at learning spaces?” He explained he pays attention to the small details and notices how problems are resolved. Reflecting on the group, we all would have noticed something different from the same space. We walked through an early learning centre and Grades 1-3. Architects, designers, educators, doctors, teachers and researchers may all have noticed something unique to the lense we have. The acoustic specialist I was with was seeing how space responded to the noise of learning.

This reminds me of the book by Alexandra Horowitz “On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation” and how specialist guides might help unlock insights we might never notice. Perhaps there is a way to share guided tours of the same learning space – curated cues from designers, teachers and other specialists. Maybe it is just a short briefing framework that helps us look more closely beyond our familiar frame.

Student Participation in the Design Process

The reflection activity during the regular conference programme asked us to look at how much participation students might have in the design process. One of the other workshops were using Lego in small group collaboration to map out the levels of participation throughout the process. Generally speaking, I want to see more students involved in the design process. But it often feels a bit empty and tokenistic.

I have run student workshops during the master planning process for schools, and their insights are so vital. Our students have a different story to tell of the environments we share. We need to find lots of different ways to surface these stories. It is not just about asking students to ‘redesign the playground’ or big open draw whatever you want in your new school type tasks. The cold reality of our work means less grappling hook elevators and flying foxes to get around the campus, unfortunately.
It makes me wonder about the authentic, meaningful role that our learners can have in the process. I want to talk to more people about their ideas for this as I explore it further.

Shadowing students using design thinking approaches is an excellent start as it puts the learner’s experience at the centre of challenging our assumptions. Many schools I work with over the years have used this technique to uncover insights previously disconnected from strategic planning.

Protospaces

Some of the presentations and the site visit featured active prototyping on low budgets. This was a missing element from the process diagrams we had seen. Prototyping done well, gives students and staff the chance to learn and experience something – not just talk about what might be. Clarity comes from action.

At the school visit prototyping lower budget spaces had been an integral part of the success fo their project. I wondered if prototyping was just the norm and how much we might gain from adopting a prototyping approach to the whole process.
Prototyping comes with risk and some uncertainty – how much stability do you need in a learning environment to make the most of prototyping a range of ideas. Perhaps it is like the risk portfolio – we need to balance our risks, some low some high. Stability here means a higher propensity for risk there.

Key Takeaway

A critical reflection for me from day two is that we need to keep asking questions about the process of designing schools and new learning environments. We need more innovation within the process, not just the outcome.

Thanks for exploring my reflections with me, let me know what you think in the comments below. It is the final day of the conference today, and I will be sharing more in my newsletter later today.

Reflections on Transition A

TomEducation Architecture, FeaturedOctober 3, 2019October 3, 2019Leave a Comment

On the way home yesterday from Melbourne I realised I had quite a headache. I spent the day in the company of about 100 others at the #transitions19 conference. Transitions 19 is a three-day event exploring innovative learning environments and how teachers transition into such spaces.

Here are some of my reflections from day one, in the order, they emerge from my head/keyboard.

It is hard to access someone else’s PhD research.
I tried.
My jargon radar is still working.
Communicating ideas is just as important as expertise and originality. You can have great insight, but if you can’t express it, fewer people can take that idea and take action of their own.
Concrete style (Steven Pinker) is an essential approach to communicating ideas.
Learning experience design is a holistic skill set that encompasses the way we move in a space, utilise the stuff in a space and lots of other nuance.
When you don’t pay attention to task design or activity design, it doesn’t matter about the environment.
Environmental factors impacting on learning spaces are different in different Australian states.
A Welcome to Country shares symbols of safety. Made me think about the way we signal safety to each other in facilitation.
The Typologies of Space (Fisher – see pic) or a set of categories of modern learning spaces is quite limited. It seems to miss more than it captures.
Are there specific types for modes of learning? (like collaboration)
For different subjects? What is the spectrum of space types for science and maker labs, for example?
What is the range of types for specific pedagogies? Take dialogic pedagogy – what spaces might create the ideal conditions for that?
How is the outdoor connection represented in the set in the image? Most Primary age learning spaces need to consider their relationship to the outdoors.

There is still a vast gap between practitioners (teachers and designers) and academia in the learning environments. This gap is exacerbated by more academese.
We need to find better ways to distil, communicate and share the emerging research and evidence.
Teachers and school leaders have poor access to the evidence and research that informs physical environment design.
School leaders still ask “why should schools bother creating innovative learning environments?”
There is still a great deal of uncertainty about what works and what doesn’t – there are more questions than answers. I suppose that is why there is research.
This problem reminds me of my role and responsibility in helping teachers bridge the gap to emerging research. I might develop some one-page summaries of a dozen papers that should inform our thinking.
How does the aesthetic and design of the workplace influence the design of universities? How does the aesthetic and design of universities impact K12 schools? Has the Google office design, usurped the design of primary school spaces?
When teachers speak about their direct experience of spaces and furniture, it is a tonic to the theory.
We need to spend more time immersed in the experience of teaching and learning to better co-design learning environments. My design thinking spidey sense is tingling.

I tweeted through day one – so that is another repository of some random thoughts on the conference as they happened. More to follow tomorrow as I settle in for another day of the conference. Let me know if anything resonates with you.

Lipstick on the gorilla

TomEducation ArchitectureApril 24, 2019April 24, 2019Leave a Comment

Adam Wood presents a healthy dose of provocation in his article about the current state of education architecture in Australia.

https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=3821

Adam Wood

The idea that resonated with me the most is the “faddishness of school design” – our fascination with the image of new school architecture.

New school designs also risk following the current trend for ‘Instagrammable’ architecture, buildings that look impressive from the outside but that disappoint inside to the point of being dysfunctional. The big challenge for Australia is to resist the faddishness of school design so problematic internationally, and focus on spaces that are genuinely useful and meaningful for students and teachers.

When developing a set of options for school design, a team researches a collection of visual precedents. These are photos of real examples of room layouts, facades, furniture and surface finishes. At there worst, they are merely a set of images dredged from the internet, with no story. These images are then used to justify to a client any design choices. What we are often missing is the narrative of the user experience.

Decision makers (clients) are often in a situation with high-investment, high stakes, short timelines and marketing pressure for enrolment. The user experience is something much harder to sell and to hook into, even if it is the core reason for a new building. The user experience is less “instagrammable.”

Our students deserve better than simply “that looks good”. Design choices can be articulated in a broader way than simply using imagery. Technology is providing an amazing array of tools to tell the story of new learning spaces.

We can create a rich set of user experience precedents that are complemented by the stock imagery so commonly lauded over. To create “genuinely useful and meaningful spaces” for teachers and learners we have to use narrative, virtualisation and imagery.

The narratives can also serve as the fixed points we use to evaluate the success of educational architecture.

How have we been able to bring to life these fictional accounts?
How close to reality were our design stories?
How do the user experiences compare after one, three, six and twelve months of post-occupancy?

Adam links out from his article to an interview with Adrian Leaman, who runs Building Use Studies and leads a UK educational charity the Usable Buildings Trust, who explains,

In post-occupancy evaluations, we often find that the results for the “Image” variable are much better than almost all the others. The occupants will tell you “It looks good, but it does not work well”. Lipstick on the gorilla was the way one designer described it! A pretty building but thermally it’s horrible, the ventilation’s terrible, the lighting is so-so, it’s very noisy, people want to escape from it and so on. The discourse about architecture and schools is very superficial. There is a reluctance for designers to re-visit buildings to see how they really work, and what people really think about them.

Here are some ideas to broaden the discourse and for us all to consider when we are involved in these projects.

Observe the time and space of teaching and learning. Immerse your self in teaching and learning, carefully observe how a learning space functions, and how the users make it work for them. Explore the patterns you notice across multiple groups.
Articulate what your learning community values the most. Share a set of principles about teaching and learning. Explain the hopes and dreams you have for the students in your community. As Ira Socol asks: “What do you want your children to be?”
Question the story behind the imagery. Spend time exploring the stories portrayed in the images used in the project documentation. Question and probe for the story of the user experience. Don’t settle for “these are just some examples” – example of what experience? How do they articulate the experience we are striving to create?
Create user experience precedents. Use narrative, imagery and virtual simulations to articulate design ideas. Capture case studies of existing user experience in the school to use as points of evaluation further into the process.
Establish a framework for evaluation. Commit to pre- and post-occupancy long term, using the existing spaces and user experiences as a baseline. It is often a long road, so ensure it is invested in and referenced throughout the process by all stakeholders.

Image by Ozgu Ozden

At the Frontier of Redefining School

TomEducation ArchitectureApril 23, 2019April 23, 2019Leave a Comment

Over the weekend I have been doing some maintenance on this blog. I looked back on the archive and dug around in the old posts. It reminded me of the commitment to change I had when I became a teacher.

I was quick to align myself with other people making a change in the profession. It seemed that technology was a wave we were riding, a wave that would take us to change. I still think that technology as a catalyst has a huge role to play in the renewal of education and schools, but I think a different frontier is going unnoticed.

Every time a school builds a new set of learning spaces or a school system decides to build a new school, there is the opportunity for “school” to be completely redefined.

I am fortunate to be involved with some of the newest schools in Australia, both in the current design phases and in post-occupancy. Each example is an opportunity to push the system of “school” and to wash away the vestiges of an educational model that does not serve the needs of our young learners.

My projects involve establishing the base principles of teaching and learning as early as possible in the design process. Even before an architect is involved. The groundwork of establishing the First Principles of the overall project is essential and vital work. All too often this is not invested in and poorly conceived.

I was delighted to read Ira Socol’s post titled “What does it mean to build a school or to rebuild a school?” in which he echoes similar endeavours.

“I really ask all the architects here,” I said in response to an architect who had asked educators to be better clients — with bigger dreams, “to help develop those better clients by asking, at the very start, “what do you want your children to be?” Don’t ask about spaces or number of students or timelines or budget, not yet. Make that first question, “what do you want your children to be?” and help us remake education.”

If that first question is about spaces and student population, as Socol points out, it short-circuits the dialogue. No longer is there a value base being established or a shared morality, it becomes a wish-list discussion.

His question “what do you want your children to be?” cuts to the heart of what should be driving any educational architectural process. But this is equally true of existing schools and their existing practices. It is often much more challenging to escape old ideas.

If you want your children to be creative, to be collaborators, to be great communicators, to know how to make choices, to know how to build their own work and/or learning environments, to be kind, to be curious, to learn throughout their lives from the great wide world, to engage with technology well, to build healthy relationships and lead healthy lives… well… can you really do that within the closed boundaries of traditional schools? Can you do that with age-separated learning? with closed classroom doors? with separated subject areas? without seating choices? without technology choices? without culturally engaged learning groups?

When you reflect on the questions Ira Socol shares, you rapidly realise the physical environment is dependent on many other forces. They are intertwined and connected. When we tug on one another is affected.

QUESTIONS	PRINCIPLES AND DEPENDENCIES
Can you really do that within the closed boundaries of traditional schools?	Privacy, safety, community, partnerships
Can you do that with age-separated learning?	Age Vs Stage, readiness, collaboration, community, personalised
Can you do that with closed classroom doors?	Functional learning spaces, community, partnerships,
Can you do that with separated subject areas?	Curriculum design, team teaching, interdisciplinary projects, collaboration
Can you do that without seating choices?	Student choice, agency, functional learning spaces, investment in furniture, different learning modes
Can you do that without technology choices?	Strategic technology integration, curriculum design, Student choice, agency,
Can you do that without culturally engaged learning groups?	Community, partnership, collaboration, curriculum and learning design

We need to take the re-invention of education seriously. We need to mean it when we say “we’re going to build a new school,” or, “we’re going to rebuild an old school,” so that we imagine into existence something completely new — and thus give our architects free range to develop true child-centric learning spaces.

Although I agree with refreshing our perspective on the importance of these projects, I do think the best architects understand how to create child-centric learning spaces. Decades of expertise, projects and practice mean that educational architecture is understood. It is often the lack of ambition of the client, (the school or school system) that foreshadows any real innovation.

Architects and design teams look for guidance as to how hard they can push. How far they can stretch the brief and express a truly imaginative response? They look for the educator’s guidance on the extent to which they can “imagine into existence something completely new”.

This is where the precedent and the past catch up with educators. Facing real opportunities for innovation, we limit projects to incremental versions of what we already have. Worse yet, we continue old practices in new buildings.

Aesthetically beautiful with contemporary function, but pedagogically nostalgic.

An idea that Ira Socol explains more clearly than I did, in my recent post about the morality of educational architecture, is the inter-generational tension of school design. Schools are places for children built by adults.

Our education system was built from the very beginning on adult needs and adult priorities.

When adults do not design with empathy, we are designing an adult biased experience. Or at least for the school, we wish we had. Not the school for children we are yet to meet.

I will finish by sharing this final paragraph from Ira’s great blog post. There is so much truth here that we all should grapple with.

When we build a school, or rebuild a school, we need to insist on doing the right thing, and doing it completely. We must create a learning space that is physically safe, psychologically safe, emotionally safe for every child. And that learning space needs to be surrounded by a community, a nation, and a state with that same abundance. Only then can our kids truly be kids, and truly be kids on their way to being healthy adults. Adults who will be way better than we adults have been.

Make sure you have a read of the post in full here: “What does it mean to build a school, or to rebuild a school?“

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Category: Education Architecture