Although, UNESCO (2019) calls for schools to become “welcoming spaces …  where respect and appreciation for the diversity of all students prevail” (pp. 11, 15), students are challenged in their presence, participation and achievement in education. The World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) drawing on data collected from over 160 countries reported that 80% of students living in rural areas in low-income countries transition to secondary school settings as opposed to 91% of students living in urban areas (UNESCO, 2022). Moreover, PISA 2018 reported on student perceptions of discrimination by their teachers on the grounds of gender, ethnicity and advantaged or disadvantaged backgrounds (OECD, 2020). The report indicated lack of guidance and teachers being challenged with creating inclusive environments for all students (OECD, 2020). Prior to that, PISA results showed that 23% of students in Australia felt like outsiders reporting a low sense of belonging and scoring lower in science than students who did not experience like they did not belong in their school, indicating that their sense of belonging impacted on their achievement (OECD, 2017). Additionally, despite “the importance of the representation and participation of the youth of today in decisions concerning their education and their future (UNESCO, 2019, p. 17), student voice in research related to their education is missing (Gillett-Swan & Osborne Burton, 2022). The abovementioned data demonstrates inclusive education being “approved and valued”, but not fully accepted or implemented, “just not right now, or not right here” (Price, 2017, p. 157). However, emerging research has evidenced the transformative role of architecture in promoting students’ inclusive education.

Architecture defined as space students “move through, exist in and use” (Meier, 1984, p. 1) has been identified for its role in enabling student movement and transitioning to different activities (Love, 2019; McAllister & Maguire, 2012), as well as student learning and achievement (Everatt et al., 2019; Hughes & Morrison, 2020). However, architecture has also been evidenced for challenging students’ inclusive education with inaccessible school spaces being reported (i.e., Ackah-Jnr & Danso, 2019). Nevertheless, students’ experiences are rarely reported, rather data exploring the intersectionality between inclusive education and architecture has been collected from educators alone (i.e., Love, 2019) and/or parent/carers (i.e., Wijesekera et al., 2019). Informing the intersectionality of architecture with inclusive education, this case study in a primary school setting in metropolitan South Australia reports on student and educator experiences of teaching and learning within open plan spaces, planned to accommodate two teachers and 40 students approximately.

The overarching research question and subsidiary questions that underpinned the study were as follows:

• What role does architecture, inclusive of physical, social and semantic space play in students’ inclusive education?

1. What are student, parent/carer and educator (school community members) understandings and experiences of inclusive education?
2. What do students identify to be the key elements in the school’s architecture that promote their inclusive education?

Theoretical framework

Practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014) explores “how some particular sets of sayings (language) come to hang together with a particular set of doings (in activity, or work) and a particular set of relatings (e.g., particular kinds of power relationships or relationships of inclusion or exclusion)” (Mahon et al., 2017, p. 8). By employing a practice architectures theoretical lens, the current study explored three dimensions of space: physical, semantic and social space enabling or challenging the enactment of inclusive education in a primary school context. Although the practice architectures theoretical lens enabled the exploration of the internal complexity of the school, this presentation will report on some of the material-economic arrangements in the physical space of the school, the open plan spaces.  

Students’ potential to contribute to deep understandings have led to research epistemologies shifting from engaging students as “recipients” and “data sources”, where their perspectives are only acknowledged, to “co-researchers” in participatory processes of “collective creation and iterative improvement” (Barbera et al., 2017, p. 105; Fielding, 2001, p. 136). However, participatory approaches are scarcely employed in qualitative studies raising the question about the potential challenges associated with this form of research. On the spectrum of participatory approaches resides the participatory co-design methodology, which was adopted in this qualitative case study of a primary school in South Australia. Aiming to identify the role of architecture in students’ inclusive education ten students from Reception, 21 Year 4 students, 34 educators (two school leaders, 21 teachers, 9 staff members who did not specify their role, one Education Support Officer and one teacher/numeracy support staff member), and three parents/carers participated in the study. Data was collected through surveys, focus groups and visual participatory co-design methods, including auto-photography, digital and hand-made storybooks, and digital construction models using Tinkercad. Additionally, 14 students from Year 4 (aged 9-10) were invited as co-researchers as “experts of their experience” (Castro et al., 2018, p. 3), collecting and coding data through auto-photography and focus groups. Thematic analysis was employed combining inductive and deductive approaches driven by a practice architectures lens (Kemmis et al., 2014). In contributing to the research field of inclusive education, listening to all students’ experiences was prioritised because “any student might experience marginalisation in a school context, regardless if they are falling in any particular group deemed to be at risk of marginalisation or not” (Messiou, 2014, p. 602). Relinquishing control to allow and facilitate student-driven research by having students as co-researchers promoted student learning, student empowerment and generation of authentic data, informing enablers and challenges of inclusive education in the school’s architecture.

Drawing on findings from students and educators, open plan spaces, such as double classrooms and the library were identified as a critical material-economic arrangement in the school architecture. Informing open plan spaces as an enabler of inclusive education, according to one educator, ‘open learning classrooms’ were identified for ‘promot[ing] collaboration amongst the children’, whereas another educator supported that ‘double classrooms help students socialise and interact with lots of different peers’. Open plan spaces were also reported as challenging students’ inclusive education. As educators identified, ‘Double classrooms are noisy environments for children with sensory needs, who can be hyper-stimulated by sounds’, ‘children often comment on the loudness and not being able to concentrate’. However, according to the students, these ‘large spaces’ enhanced their accessibility, movement, socialisation and overall participation in their learning, thus enabling their inclusive education. Students expressed their preference towards open plan learning spaces such as the oval or the curiosity centre sharing that ‘it’s fun there. It has a lots of space. You can see the sun and stuff and you can run around’, ‘it’s a larger space and people can go there’. Another Year 4 student in their auto-photography explained that they felt included in the hall ‘because my friends and I go there in recess and lunch. It is warm and has a lot of space’. Educators in this study experienced the school architecture as both an enabler and a challenge of students’ inclusive education, similarly reported by Everatt et al. (2019) as a way towards maximised adoption of space-related innovations. The focus of this presentation is to discuss the implications of these findings for students’ education informing educators’ knowledge of enabling and challenging material-economic arrangements in innovative, open, versatile and multi-functional spaces, thus improving future innovative learning spaces and global inclusive education initiatives.

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