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.