Cada uno de los actos que conforman nuestro desarrollo profesional docente, por pequeño que sea, está íntimamente ligado a nuestras concepciones y creencias educativas: las conscientes y las inconscientes. La forma en que presentamos una actividad, en la que preparamos el espacio del aula, los materiales que elegimos, la forma en que interactuamos con los niños ... absolutamente todo nos habla de nuestra imagen de infancia, de nuestra imagen de maestro y por supuesto de nuestra imagen de educación. (Trueba, 2015).

En la investigación aquí presentada, el diseño estético del espacio educativo se convierte en el factor clave que visibiliza las concepciones pedagógicas que orientan la práctica diaria de los docentes. Las decisiones que toman en relación con el diseño del espacio nos dicen cómo comprenden y desarrollan el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Es decir, estos espacios se convierten en mensajes explícitos de su conocimiento práctico, entendido como el conjunto de conocimientos, habilidades, valores, actitudes y emociones que operan de forma automática y que condicionan nuestra percepción y desempeño (Peña Trapero & Pérez Gómez, 2019).

Los espacios escolares muestran así la brecha entre las acciones automáticas derivadas de toda la arraigada cultura escolar, y aquello que los profesores apoyan y defienden verbalmente. Es decir, evidencian la distancia entre sus acciones y sus intenciones, entre hacer y decir, entre sus teorías en uso y sus teorías proclamadas (Argyris, 1993; Schön, 1994). Si bien esta distancia es casi inevitable, cada vez es más necesario hacerla consciente para intentar transformarla.

This case study, financed by the University of Malaga and an FPU contract (04/17106) granted by the Ministry of Education of Spain, aims to understand the experience of reflection and pedagogical-spatial transformation lived by the group of teachers of Early Childhood Education of the public school “Frida Kahlo”, in a coastal town in southern Spain. And with this it intends to understand how this complex process of transformation from practical knowledge (action) to practical thinking (reflection) (Pérez Gómez, 2017, 2020) of these teachers in relation to the educational space is developed.

Like any story, this one also has a beginning, and it is the visit of three teachers of this school to the public school “El Martinet”. Inspired by the beauty of this Catalonian school and its conception of teaching and learning, teachers begin the transformation of their practice towards more active and freedom models, where the school space can become an educational space (Acaso, 2018; Ceppi & Zini, 1998; Charteris, Smardon & Nelson, 2017; Nair, 2014). ‘Educational’ understood here as that process that helps to grow autonomously, critically and creatively (Pérez Gómez, 2012). Some of the first signs of this progressive change are: the absence of blackboards and structured tables and chairs that recall the image of a traditional and academic school, and the emergence of open arrangements organized in learning environments that promote the flexible development of different knowledge and languages ​​(De Pablo & Trueba, 1994; Riera Jaume, Ferrer Ribot & Ribas Mas, 2014).

Ante este interesante y peculiar caso, nos planteamos interrogantes que motivan este estudio: ¿cuáles son los principios que orientan la idea de espacio para los docentes, y qué revelan estos sobre su concepción teórica del proceso educativo? ¿Qué presencia tienen los diferentes factores estéticos (espacios, zonas verdes, mobiliario, objetos, imágenes, colores, sonidos, olores, iluminación ...) en la práctica actual de sus aulas, y qué nos dice esto sobre los más inconscientes y acciones automáticas y conocimientos que determinan su desarrollo profesional? ¿Qué transformaciones metodológico-espaciales están desarrollando y cómo se relacionan estos cambios con la transformación de su conocimiento práctico en pensamiento práctico?

Knowing the physical and pedagogical reality that shapes this research means taking into account the diversity of subjective, conscious and unconscious conceptions and assessments that each individual brings to the subject in question. This sets a study focus that cannot be measured objectively, but on the contrary places us in an experience lived and felt by the actors, and which is therefore always subjectively measured by each subject and social subjectivity (Flores, 2015). The qualitative approach and, in particular, the case study (Stake, 2010; Stenhouse, 1980) appears then in this context as the most appropriate approach to understand these personal conceptions and criteria of assessment. It seeks to make a global approximation of the social situations to explore, describe and understand them inductively. This means starting from the knowledge that different people have involved in those situations and not deductively from hypotheses formulated by an external researcher (Barreto, 2007). The data collection techniques have been diverse, including: observation and pedagogical documentation of the physical reality of the different learning environments and the performance of the teachers in them; the realization of a discussion group with these same teachers; and documentary analysis. This diversity of techniques offers us the possibility of contrasting and triangulating the data obtained through each one of them, providing this with greater credibility and validity to the investigation. The lack of coherence between them has become, precisely, the key to detect categories and axes of interest. Thus, for example, while the review of documents has given us, mainly, information about what the participants "say they do", the observation and documentation has given us more information about what the participants "do". The triangulation of both techniques has allowed us to realize the distance between proclaimed theories and theories in use by the teachers. The same issue is pointed out by Walker (1989), stating that "the most effective way to identify problems is to identify any discrepancy that arises: between what people say and do, or between theory and practice" (p. 180).

The importance of this research lies in the understanding that the reflection on space design involves and concretes an educational philosophy and a way of teacher being consistent with a truly educational process. The aesthetic design of the space thus becomes the germ for teachers to begin to rethink their own practice, to reprogram their already automated cognitive and emotional mechanisms. In this way, the physical-spatial change is also accompanied by a process of personal and professional reconstruction, a reflexive process towards congruence between its educational principles and the actual practice in its classrooms. In this regard, it should be noted that, despite the still existing contradictions between their declared theories and the spaces they offer - fruit of their experience in traditional schools until a few years ago - all of them currently feel the aesthetic improvement of the environments as a duty towards childhood, since they have the right to grow in stimulating, rich and freedom contexts. Thus, the changes that have been made and that show that real interest and involvement in the subject, are strengthened by perceiving a new and educational performance and relationship with the learning of children in the Early Childhood service. It’s a process in which pupils acquire an increasingly active role. The results of this research allow us to draw two relevant conclusions: a) The process of spatial transformation reinforces in teachers the questioning of other educational variables until now unquestionable, reconstructing their practical knowledge or theories in use. This happens especially in those teachers with previous dispositions based on commitment and intellectual concern. b) These spatial and personal transformations allow the development of new teaching dispositions in consonance with less interventional pedagogical theories.

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