Towards Creative Learning Spaces

Re-thinking the Architecture of Post-Compulsory Education

Jos Boys

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136859656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book offers new ways of investigating relationships between learning and the spaces in which it takes place. It suggests that we need to understand more about the distinctiveness of teaching and learning in post-compulsory education, and what it is that matters about the design of its spaces. Starting from contemporary educational and architectural theories, it suggests alternative conceptual frameworks and methods that can help map the social and spatial practices of education in universities and colleges; so as to enhance the architecture of post-compulsory education.

Part 1
Reviewing our frames

Chapter 1
Learning spaces from an architectural perspective

There are now a considerable number of building designs aimed at creating innovative types of informal, non-hierarchical, flexible and technology-rich spaces for learning in post-compulsory education, both in the UK and globally. Rather than merely list good examples, which can be easily found elsewhere (JISC 2006; Scottish Funding Council 2006; Tertiary Education Facilities Management Association (TEFMA) 2006; Australian Teaching and Learning Council (ATLC) 2007; Oblinger 2006), this chapter aims instead to critically explore some of the underlying conceptual frameworks and assumptions behind these recent architectural projects. In fact, I suggest that a set of new design ‘types’ is already coming into such common usage as to potentially be the new norm. This raises several questions that are not yet being asked. How do such innovative learning spaces connect ideas about physical space to intended effects on learning? What new typologies are being offered as more appropriate environments for post-compulsory education? Are these new kinds of environments enhancing learning as predicted? Does this recent addition of new types of learning space provide for the full range of learning in post-compulsory education, or are there important gaps and alternatives which are not being considered? And how do these new building designs relate to shifts in contemporary architecture more generally, especially to its most recent theories about, and approaches to, the design of space and its occupation? Ultimately I will argue that in order to answer these questions we need to unravel what matters about space when it comes to learning; that is, to develop a better understanding of how space ‘works’.

The impact of the informal learning model on design

In September 2007, a design workshop was organised by architects Wood Bagot in Melbourne, Australia, to ‘create a new generation of learning environments on campus which support the shift towards more student-centred, collaborative and problem-based learning approaches’ (Jamieson 2008: 2). This workshop started from the ‘common-sense’ belief, already outlined, that current learning spaces in universities and colleges are no longer adequate for the emerging pedagogies of higher education. Delegates agreed that we are – or should be – moving from a teacher-centric transfer of knowledge (via the archetypical lecture theatre) towards more student-centred, collaborative and problem-based learning approaches. By focusing on the design of the classroom setting ‘where the bulk of an undergraduate student’s formal educational experience takes place’ (Jamieson 2008: 4), the workshop therefore aimed to stimulate thinking about new learning environments, to find more creative ways of engaging participants in the design process, and to find ways of prioritising design in the educational project management process. Participants were invited to imagine new class spaces, based on more informal, flexible and personalised forms of learning. The ‘problem’ was framed as follows:

In formal classrooms, in particular, the physical environment is fundamental to the experience of the student. The physical setting shapes expectations, class size, enables certain possibilities for acting whilst impeding or excluding others, and impacts on matters such as student control and ownership of the setting. More subjectively, the setting is intrinsically linked to student comfort and motivation as it involves fundamental characteristics such as acoustic quality, thermal and lighting levels as well as decorative aspects such as colour and material finishes that are integral to the occupant’s well-being and capability.

(Jamieson 2008: 20)

Thus, the argument goes, a space set up for presentational delivery from the front by one person to large numbers of individuals does not prevent, but may work against, collaborative and small-group activities, especially where furniture and other facilities are fixed. In addition, the occupants of a space are seen to be affected by its environmental qualities, functional and relational capabilities, and by the ‘cues’ it offers as to what is likely to be going on there. By analysing these conditions and altering them, behaviours can also be altered.

The report’s author, Peter Jamieson, proposes that two key disciplines facilitate this type of analysis, each with a discourse that has previously developed independently. These are teaching and learning research (e.g. Entwistle 1984; Ramsden 1992; Prosser and Trigwell 1999) and environmental behaviour and psychology (e.g. Canter and Lee 1974; Lawson 2001; Scott-Webber 2004). The former has opened up debates about how to make higher education more student-centred, the latter enables better understanding of how humans relate to the built environment and what this means for the performance of teachers and students in the classroom. Jamieson argues that bringing these disciplines together enables us to understand, for example, ‘the need for natural light, the preference for certain colours [and] the issue of ‘personal’ space’ (Jamieson 2008: 24). Following Scott-Webber (2004: 6), he proposes that the design task is:

to create environments capable of supporting intended behaviours. It follows, then, that the role of educators in contributing to the design of improved learning environments should be to articulate the intended behaviours of the teachers and students in those settings in order to inform the spatial solutions provided by the design team.

(Jamieson 2008: 25)

As Jamieson emphasises, this is not a simplistic deterministic relationship between spatial ‘cause’ and learning ‘effect’:

Lawson (2001) talks about the designer influencing, but not determining, behaviour by making a ‘move in space that frames or invites behaviour’ and knowing ‘when to leave the space more ambiguous’ (p. 225). It may be as much a matter of what we design ‘out’, as opposed to what we design ‘in’, that leads to an effective learning environment. Can we anticipate all the needs and intentions of the users (teacher and students)? Should we even try? Which needs or functions are most important to accommodate and how do we prioritise these?

(Jamieson 2008: 14)

In addition to this problem of explicitly articulating the complex and partial relationships between behaviours and environment, there is also the difficulty of being able to analyse precisely what it is that teachers, students and researchers actually do, and how and why this is changing. Thus, Woods Bagot suggest, an expertise in educational planning is also required, which can ‘translate’ between design and pedagogic languages, both in defining appropriate intended behaviours and in offering relevant design solutions.

All of this can appear so obvious and straightforward, that it hardly seems worth discussing. Of course we are affected by poor-quality environments (too hot, too cold, without a view, drab, etc.), and improvements in comfort and quality are likely to enhance our experiences of a space. Behavioural and environmental psychologists have been attempting to precisely pin down these different stimuli–response mechanisms, with varying degrees of success, for many years (Edgerton, Romice and Spencer 2007). Yet, while such approaches have their value in highlighting the basic functional and physiological dimensions of material space, they are less useful for unravelling the multiplicity of everyday social and spatial intersections that occur when particular participant groupings come together and engage in specific cultural – here learning – practices, embedded in situated contexts. These activities are inherently complex, dynamic, contested and open to many interpretations simultaneously. What the Melbourne workshop actually illustrates is both the important but relatively banal qualities that behaviourist approaches can best address, centring on comfort, ‘attractiveness’ and flexibility, and the impossibility of pinning down a standard formula or solution that makes a better, informal learning classroom.

In fact, here, as in many other arguments in favour of informal learning spaces, the overall ‘solutions’ are already given by the initial premise. Because there is an intended shift away from formal to more informal and student-centred learning methods, there is a perceived need for new types of non-hierarchical and flexible classrooms which can both accommodate a greater range of activities and ‘promote movement within the space and enable student control over facilities such as tables, chairs, benches, IT devices and learning materials’ (Jamieson 2008: 11).

But at the same time, this ‘obvious’ idea of making more flexible spaces turns out to be itself full of complexities and difficulties. The aim, after all, is to rethink the classroom space such that it ‘is likely that a radically different conception of the “classroom” as a learning environment will emerge with inspiration drawn from other successful social, recreational, and workplace environments’ (Jamieson 2008: 20). Yet the notion of what flexibility actually means in this context, and how it might lead to such a radical shift, turns out to be deeply problematic:

What is meant by flexibility? Does it refer to the capacity to move and rearrange furniture at the discretion of the user, allowing the use to change according to need? Does it refer to the range of activity that can be supported in a single space simultaneously? Alternatively, does it mean that a space is adaptable and able to support pedagogical alternatives – in other words, different modes of teaching and learning?

(Jamieson 2008: 58)

But if flexibility is actually about enabling different modes of teaching and learning, then surely this is an issue of changing educational methods rather than spaces? In fact, what is required is a better understanding of the range of existing and potential teaching and learning modes in any particular situation, as well as the particular spatial and architectural conditions which can support them. Ultimately this is less a matter of generic ‘flexibility’ than of developing techniques for the creative and constructive mapping of teaching and learning practices and spaces. This will be explored in greater detail in Chapter 5. What is interesting about the Melbourne workshop, as a good example of current debates, is that it mainly exposes how under-theorised the relationship between learning and space remains, and it also often reveals the ambiguities and problems in what is offered up as a common-sense and obvious solution – informal and flexible design.

The architectural practice behind the workshop, Woods Bagot, is an international firm with considerable professional expertise in the area of education. Like many mainstream architect practices, it has built up a body of specialist knowledge by moving easily and eclectically across various approaches and methods, including, but also beyond, behaviourist methods. These architects are strongly aware that architecture is not just about comfort and ‘attractiveness’, but also, for example, about more strategic concerns, which frame the learning encounter/classroom arrangement such as cost, structural and constructional robustness, management, identity and other institutional agendas. John Holm, also from Woods Bagot, spoke at the Melbourne workshop about how architects must:

traditionally (do) ‘things right’, which means ensuring the building is technically correct in terms of variables such as occupancy levels, activities, comfort (temperature, light, ventilation, occupational health and safety, personal safety) and condition (maintenance, wear and tear, anticipated life expectancy).

But they must also achieve ‘organisational outcomes’ – much harder to measure – ‘such as flexibility (capacity for growth, modification and adaptation), performance (effectiveness of facility in achieving teaching and learning outcomes), and branding (image, design and appropriateness)’ (Jamieson 2008: 48).

Here, though, I want to suggest that the common-sense behaviourism of much mainstream architectural practice hides more than it reveals, and to explore how we can think differently about the relationships between learning and space. As I have already noted, whilst it remains important to engage with functional and physiological needs, these should not be assumed as obvious and generic, but as having complex and situated intersections with the spatial and social practices through which we ‘do learning’. To examine this further I want first to look at the effects such common-sense and behaviourist understandings currently circulating are having on the development of particular building types for post-compulsory education over recent years; and then to consider alternative understandings in contemporary architecture about how space ‘works’ in relation ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Reviewing our frames
• Part 2 Mapping the terrain
• Part 3 Shifting the boundaries
• Bibliography
• Index