In recent decades substantial research effort has been devoted to the material landscape(s) of education, often referred to as the ‘materialities of schooling’ (Braster et al., 2011; Grosvenor & Lawn, 2005; Priem et al., 2012). Researchers from different fields – such as anthropology, sociology, historiography and instructional sciences – ‘turned’ more than before ‘to things’ (Preda, 1999) and spaces, such as school architecture, artworks placed in schools, classroom furniture, spatial organization and learning tools (see for instance, Burke & Grosvenor, 2008; Burke et al., 2013; Herman et al., 2008, 2011^{a, b, c}; Depaepe et al., 2012). The increased interest in or, better, the ‘rediscovery’ (Herman et. al., 2011^b) of the spatial and the material, the greater number of approaches to materialities, and the increasing recognition of the (inter)relationship(s) between objects, spaces and human actions are nowadays often referred to as the ‘spatial turn’ or the ‘turn to things’.

While there is a large body of educational research confirming the impact of the quality of the educational environment on the teacher and the pupils (e.g. Brooks, 2010; Deal & Peterson, 1999; Dudek, 2000; Moore & Lackney, 1993), relatively little has been written about the complex networks of spaces/things/actors. Rather than venturing into such a hybrid approach, current research often sets its sights on singular (or a small number of) one-way relations between spaces, things and actors (e.g. influence of classroom colour on wellbeing of the pupils) and deals often with these materialities as if they are merely subjects of the imposition of collective agency by human actors, influencing as such the latter’s behavior and interactions. Fortunately, there has been a gradual reconceptualization – over the past decades – of things and spaces into full-fledged ‘mediating agencies’ (e.g. Burke, et al., 2013: 9; Preda, 1999), “animated” within these networks of spaces/things/actors and intervening in the organisational, social and cultural relationships (Hamilton, 2009: 304). In other words, the materialities of schooling are preserved, transformed by the spatial, the material and the behavioural (e.g. teaching, learning, playing, cleaning, destroying) and – at the same time – (re)act/interfere within this interplay with things, spaces and actors, sometimes fostering or hindering on-going and/or pursued processes of educational innovation. Moreover, there has been relatively little long-term analysis of this multifaceted interplay between these materialities, the actors, the applied sets of educational behaviour, and the contextual conditions.

Therefore we encourage new ways of researching the material culture within school buildings and classrooms. We advocate here a more hybrid and encompassing approach, by writing and exploring chronological biographies of the classroom, in order to gain insight in these elusive networks of spaces/things/actors and the interplays within this ‘biotope’.

The initial research questions are: (1) How did the material setting of classrooms change throughout the career of primary school teachers? (2) What behaviour and which teaching and learning processes occurred in these (changing) landscapes? (3) How did the educational praxis alter the material setting of the classroom and/or the other way around? (4) Finally, what catalysts and/or barriers of ‘change’ (e.g. social, economic, ideological and technological factors) – which initiated, reinforced, obstructed or altered behavioural changes and/or material, infrastructural, architectural modifications – were mentioned by the teachers? These general questions are translated into a number of concrete sub-questions, such as: (a) How and why did teachers personalize and decorate the school environment? (b) How did teachers respond to new furniture, new teaching tools, etc.? (c) How did teachers deal with new regulations and how did they (materially, spatially, behaviourally) translate the imposed directives?

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