Main Content
Session Information
17 SES 16, Up North and Down Under: Cases of inclusion/exclusion in innovative learning environments across hemispheres
Symposium
Contribution
Themes of school architecture in European educational history have been highlighted previously (Burke, Cunningham, & Grosvenor, 2010), while the upsurge in the development of flexible and innovative school designs in Australasia gains traction in published research (Benade, 2017; Imms, 2016). Understanding spatial themes in relation to education can (and should) be understood as a global subject too (Benade & Jackson, 2018). This symposium features presenters reporting on research in England, Iceland and New Zealand. Its purpose is to draw from themes illustrating the overlaps of state policy, facilities design, educational practice, and questions of educational inclusion and exclusion. The featured presentations focus on the role of state policy over questions of educational access, facilities design and pedagogy for non-traditional schooling environments. The presenters all draw on their own field work experience with schools that have engaged with the challenge of developing flexible, innovative designs, reflecting on how these are constituted as ‘non-traditional’. The notion of ‘tradition’ becomes a motif for thinking about educational arrangements that may have worked to exclude students, despite state policies to encourage educational inclusion, while the notion of ‘innovative design’ becomes a theme for thinking about ‘doing education’ differently, in ways that may support inclusion. To think this way, however, throws into sharp relief the challenges of establishing whether clear links exist between design and learning, and between design and pedagogy. Tensions between design primacy and established teacher practices are evident in some settings, while in other settings, design is shown to positively influence student attitudes (Sigurðardóttir, 2018), with the potential to improve citizenship qualities (Nair, 2014; Nair, Fielding, & Lackney, 2013), such as through more democratic forms of inclusion, encouraged by specific pedagogical and organisational arrangements. Participatory planning is particularly important in this regard (Woolner, McCarter, Wall, & Higgins, 2012), but conversely, there is evidence of top-down, bureaucratic approaches to planning and design (Wells, Jackson & Benade, 2018). The presenters, working in qualitative methodological modes, informed by spatial theory, report on case studies involving either single schools or multiple sites, where they have collected data using a range of tools, including observation, interview and documentary analysis. The proposed symposium on the potential of flexible learning spaces to be inclusive invites researchers to reflect on the ways space can be studied and theorised, and also to consider the complexities of policy development, and the relations between space, teaching and learning, and finally, to consider what the implications of such reflections may be for thinking about these developments in their historical context.
References
Benade, L. (2017). Being a teacher in the 21st century: A critical New Zealand research study. Singapore: Springer Nature. Benade, L. & Jackson, M. (2018). Transforming education: Design and governance in global contexts. Singapore: Springer Burke, C., Cunningham, P. & Grosvenor, I. (2010): Putting education in its place: Space, place and materialities in the history of education. History of Education 39(6), 677-680. Imms, W., Cleveland, B. & Fisher, K. (Eds). Evaluating learning environments: snapshots of emerging issues, methods and knowledge. Rotterdam, The Netherlands/Boston, MA: Sense Publishers. Nair, P. (2014). Blueprint for tomorrow: Redesigning schools for student-centered learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Sigurðardóttir, A.K. (2018). Student-centred classroom environments in upper secondary school: Students’ ideas about good spaces for learning vs. actual arrangements. In L. Benade & M. Jackson, (Eds.), Transforming education: Design and governance in global contexts (pp. 183-197). Singapore: Springer Wells, A., Jackson, M. & Benade, L. (2018). Modern Learning Environments: Embodiment of a disjunctive encounter. In L. Benade & M. Jackson, (Eds.), Transforming education: Design and governance in global contexts (pp. 3-17). Singapore: Springer Woolner, P.; McCarter, S.; Wall, K. & Higgins, S. (2012). Changed learning through changed space: When can a participatory approach to the learning environment challenge preconceptions and alter practice? Improving Schools 15(1), 45-60.
Programme by Network 2019
00. Central Events (Keynotes, EERA-Panel, EERJ Round Table, Invited Sessions)
Network 1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Network 2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Network 3. Curriculum Innovation
Network 4. Inclusive Education
Network 5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Network 6. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Network 7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Network 8. Research on Health Education
Network 9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement
Network 10. Teacher Education Research
Network 11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance
Network 12. LISnet - Library and Information Science Network
Network 13. Philosophy of Education
Network 14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Network 15. Research Partnerships in Education
Network 16. ICT in Education and Training
Network 17. Histories of Education
Network 18. Research in Sport Pedagogy
Network 19. Ethnography
Network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments
Network 22. Research in Higher Education
Network 23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Network 24. Mathematics Education Research
Network 25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Network 26. Educational Leadership
Network 27. Didactics – Learning and Teaching
Network 28. Sociologies of Education
Network 29. Reserach on Arts Education
Network 30. Research on Environmental und Sustainability Education
Network 31. Research on Language and Education (LEd)
Network 32. Organizational Education
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