In the past few decades, the educational landscape has been transformed. Such transformation not only includes changes in pedagogical practices to accommodate 21st century skills (focused on collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity) and an emphasis on student-centred learning (Daniels et al., 2018), but also architectural reforms in learning spaces (Carvalho & Yeoman, 2018; Fletcher et al. 2023; Woolner et al., 2018), and increasing digitalization in schools (Seufert et al., 2021: Sailer et al. 2021). Indeed, contemporary classrooms are increasingly complex environments, with a mix of material and digital elements, and varied layouts in the design of spaces for learning, which affect the way teaching and learning activity unfolds. 

A key transformation has been the re-ereming of open and flexible learning spaces (also termed as innovative learning environments) (OECD, 2017) at many schools across the globe. These novel layouts challenged the material, social and cultural structures of traditional classrooms and schooling. Open and flexible learning spaces typically accommodate multiple groups of students,  across different year levels and teams of teachers. Over the years, however, some teachers have shown discontent with the new spatial configurations, some even calling for reverting the innovative learning environments back to traditional layouts (Niemi, 2021), therefore prompting a need to rethink the relationship between space, materiality and learning activities. Understanding what is in place and how it affects the activity of students and teachers became incredibly important. This includes how learning interactions are organized and enacted, how teachers and students use the space, the materiality of learning at different activities, and altogether, how spatio-material relations influence and shape what unfolds in classrooms. However, capturing and exploring such nuanced relations can be complex, and we aim to contribute to emerging research that has begun to investigate how  teachers and students utilize and benefit from the types of opportunities these open and flexible spaces afford, and the forms of pedagogy that best suit such learning environments.

Our research  draws on the Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) framework (Goodyear et al., 2021), to analyze authentic interactions captured through 25 hours of video recordings at three primary schools in Finland. Each learning event was recorded on an open and flexible learning space, and involved a group of children engaged in a collaborative task. ACAD acknowledges the epistemic, physical and social situatedness of learning, by distinguishing between three designable components of a learning situation (social, set and epistemic design), and the emergent activity of learners. Our focus is on relations between multiple elements, exploring how these elements act and interact with each other, and the role they play in the emergent learning activity within the three group scenarios described below. Two research questions have guided the study, and these are:

• How do materials and layout of a space influence peer interaction during group learning activity? 

• How do teachers and students shape their learning environment?

Data in this study was drawn from a larger corpus of 25 hours of video-recorded classroom interactions in three primary schools in Finland. This video-data was collected using multiple GoPro cameras which were located and easily re-located in the different parts of the learning environments. Data collection also included observations of the daily life of students during a three-day period, as the researcher kept a research diary. Interviews with teachers were also conducted to gather contextual background information for the study. Ethical consent was obtained through the human ethics committee of the university hosting the project. The researchers extracted three segments out of the video-data from three group situations at different schools, using Critical Incidents as the method for the analysis. Critical Incidents is a method of qualitative inquiry, which is often used for the analysis of human behaviour through repeated observation. It involves gathering details about an episode of interest, and using this to facilitate reflection on what it is that makes the particular episode remarkable (Adams & Rodriguez, 2020; Tripp, 2011). Several qualitative studies in the literature have used this technique to explore behaviour (Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011), learning experiences in teacher education research (Pierson et al., 2020), and at learning design workshops (Carvalho et al., 2023). The process of analysis involved one of the researchers watching and captioning the students’ conversation at three learning events. Each researcher then independently watched the videos to identify key moments before reflecting on them as a pair. A template was used to note time, name or identifying phrase, and identify potential codes. The template also included a short description of the incident (the ‘what’), and an explanation for what made this moment ‘critical’, and this provided reasons for its inclusion, foregrounding the role that moment played within the group’s interactions (the ‘why’). In this presentation, we will share findings from three different extracts that vary in the degree of spatial and material environment, the level of student collaboration and engagement, and the role of teacher intervention. We will show the interplay of the variety of resources (spatial, material, mobile, digital) used by teachers and students, especially those that depart from traditional classroom settings.

In exploring connections between multiple elements in set, epistemic and social design through the analysis of three critical incidents, we hope to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the connections between learning space design and educational interactions. The discussion will focus on preliminary findings around three main areas: (1) Autonomy and Teacher Interaction, (2) Gestures and Bodily Actions, and (3) Objects, Space and Sound. Autonomy and Teacher Interaction focuses on teacher-child interaction and includes discussions about working independently, searching for teacher validation and searching teachers for instruction. Gestures and Bodily Actions focuses attention on gaze (where children are looking, whether they are gazing at each other or gazing at materials), the positioning of hands and body position (touching), as well as co-occurring body gestures. And Objects, Space and Sound focuses on position of objects (boundary and individual objects), hiding and revealing actions, and the presence/interference of stimuli around (visual, sound, movement), as well as furniture and layout.

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