MindMap - Week 3 - The Classroom

The classroom is the most easily identified learning space. It is synonymous with the idea of learning, school and education. The classroom is the most tangible learning space, based on a concept of grouping children by grade and age (Weiss, 2007, p.80). On the whole it has been relatively successful and accepted by society as the most advantageous arrangement for both teachers and students.

From a teachers point of view the classroom offer many strengths and challenges.

It is the personal space they share with their students, which they are free to organise in a way that suits them and their teaching style.

A classroom offers the comfort and reassurance of higher levels of classroom management, allowing for greater control of movement, noise, management of resources and equipment.

In the 1970 there was a move to merge classroom spaces together and create open plan learning spaces, with team teaching and a more fluid grouping of children and easier sharing of resources and equipment.

The classroom also raises challenges for the teacher –

Maybe the size or shape is not optimal, maybe the furniture is not working with the space, or maybe there are access issues, a lack of natural light, or not enough storage or display space. The teacher is allocated a room and required to largely work with these walls and provide learning opportunities for students with a range of learning styles and requirements.

Additionally the open plan classroom challenged teachers with high visual and auditory distractions. There was essentially a lack of structure. Too many activities were taking place in the one area. It required greater management of children and limited the ability to pursue activities that generated noise or movement.

From a students point of view the classroom raises strengths and challenges that must be considered when reviewing this space –

Being part of a class group allows students to form productive and collaborative Communities of Practice with their teacher and peers. Vygotsky emphasises that learning is essentially a social experience and thus interacting with others is fundamental to the learning process.

Routines established with the classroom will ensure continuity and a stable learning environment.

The open plan classroom offers students a dynamic highly motivating atmosphere with many options for collaboration.

Challenges

Yet overall the classroom is designed and configured to the teacher preference. “It is a child’s space designed by adults” (Read 2010). The structure imposes a hierarchical relationship between the teacher and student. Students passively sit at desks while the teacher is free to move around the room. The classroom is essentially teacher centred, the main focal point still being a board at the front of the room and desks arranged in order to view this central learning stimulus.

Children like adult will have a preference for either and high or low stimulus environment. While some children prefer simple open spaces with lots of natural light and limited colour and line that give them thinking space, others will be motivated by highly visual, colourful and busy environments that evoke movement and process (Read, 2010)

The Open plan classroom again raised the additional problems of auditory and visual distractions.

TEACHERS (classroom)

Strengths

Challenges

• Personal space within the school that within reason they can organise to their own personal style of teaching and class management.

• Greater ability to control movement and noise of student, store and access resources and equipment in a classroom.

• Size? Shape?

• Dysfunctional furniture?

• Access or stage issues.

• Natural light

• Teacher must work within the existing parameters of the structural space.

• Whiteboard still the central focus of learning

• Open plan classrooms offer opportunities for team teaching, resources sharing and flexible grouping of children.

• Noisy and more difficult to manage students and keep them focused.

• A reluctance to plan experiences that may disturb others in the room.

Slide 4 – The STUDENTS Classroom

Strengths

Challenges

• Develop social and educational relationships (CoP) with their teacher and peers within the room and student group.

• It is a consistent and familiar environment with a regular and largely predictable time schedule.

• A structured area that enhances concentration and thinking.

• A space designed by adults for the children. Little input from students. Student’s design preferences not addressed.

• Imposes a hierarchical relationship between teacher and student. Whiteboard is central learning stimulus, while sit passively at desks.

• One room yet many learning styles and design preferences

• Open plan may increase motivation and offer a variety of student interactions

• More difficult to concentrate and stay focussed.

Approaches and Strategies to ensure the classroom learning is maximised.

So how do you balance the needs of teachers, children and their personal preference and style into a single room? There are a number of valuable strategies and approaches that can be used to try and maximise comfort and safety while maintain motivation without over stimulating or distracting its inhabitants. Teachers must ask themselves if they have provided an inclusive safe environment? Does it support my curriculum objectives?

These include

• Survey students to understand “what principles and elements of design are considered aesthetically pleasing [to them]. Do they have a preference for low or high stimulus spaces? And redesign the room where possible to offer a range of design preferences.

• Provide a variety of learning spaces that balance open, flexible and more structured areas giving children options that address different learning styles included in the class and different types of lessons/experiences planned by the teacher.

• Ensuring flexibility within the classroom, furniture that can move easily and quickly depending on the nature of the learning experience.

Lippmann (2016) suggests classroom should include ”a defined large group meeting area” smaller spaces for independent and cooperative learning, and well organised storage areas allowing easy access to resources and equipment. There must be space between desks allowing teacher and children easy access around the room.

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