Reimagining Learning Spaces into Places of Learning
Stop for a second and look around. What do your physical surroundings say about the space you’re in? How do they suggest you interact with others? Is it quiet and calm? Bustling with chatter? Do you feel comfortable? Can you see natural light? What colours are on the walls or under foot? Have you ever taken time to think about how the physical space may influence how we teach or how our students engage with us, each other, and our material? Perhaps it’s time for us to start thinking about how our classroom spaces make us feel and influence the effectiveness of learning.
When we enter a classroom, we tend to take for granted our physical surroundings, and quite often we ignore the impact that the layout, furniture, technology, and even colours, textures, and light can have on our time in class. The consideration of classroom design on teaching and learning has been referred to as “built pedagogy” (see Mohanan, 2000 & 2002), and suggests that our physical learning environments can be designed to either restrict or encourage a range of interactions that reflect the values and characteristics of the learning enacted in our teaching and curriculum (Mohanan, 2000, p.1). A great example of this is moveable chairs and their ability to encourage peer and group work by providing an adaptable environment for students and instructors. As researchers become increasingly interested in how built pedagogy influences teachers’ and students’ experiences in classroom spaces, we learn more about how simple features such as flexible seating and writing surfaces, lighting, colours and textures can enhance the student experience (see Rands & Gansemer-Topf, 2017 for a review of this evidence).
But let’s not get lost in the physical characteristics of a learning space, since the dynamic between teacher-student and student-student is at the heart of teaching. Rather, our classroom spaces should reflect this interaction in a way that allows (and encourages) versatility, adaptability, and transformation of these relationships. The unseen characteristics of our environment – such as power, intimidation, freedom, safety – can influence the outcome of classroom time, for both the instructor and the student. Such dynamics can be captured through the human geography theory of place attachment, where physical spaces become places when meaning and connection are formed within them (Tuan, 1979). More recent conceptualizations of place within higher education have differentiated between learning spaces and learning places as:
…space is a box where things happen, place on the other hand is a site shaped by the relationships between the subjects and the objects that connect in a given situation. Each place or site is the product of the social context out of which it has emerged… (Neary et al., 2010, p. 42).
If classrooms are thought of as learning places, rather than spaces, we can view them as non-physical environments that are shaped not only by built features but also by the teaching and learning that occurs within them. It’s much like the way we refer to a house as the physical structure, and the home is considered the unseen dynamics created within and beyond those structure walls.
As Dalhousie University enters its 200th year, we can envision the future possibilities for our campus as we begin reimagining what learning spaces look like and discussing how teaching methods can harmonize with the physical environment to create significant places of learning. We need only to look at the current construction of the Emera IDEA Building, the recent renovations of the Student Union Building, or the new Collaborative Health Education Building (CHEB). These spaces are constructed with the goal of creating educational experiences that foster creativity, collaboration, inclusivity, shared and active learning. Imbuing both our spaces and teaching with these values, we can create a place for learning to flourish. When considering the next 200 years, I can only begin to imagine how classroom and communal student places may evolve to meet the needs of our learners, while integrating important physical and non-physical dynamics that nurture the heart of the learning experience.
References
Monahan, T. (2000). Built pedagogies and technological practices: Designing for participatory learning. Referenced from http://torinmonahan.com/papers/pdc2000.pdf
Monahan, T. (2002). Flexible space and built pedagogy: Emerging IT embodiments. Inventio, 4(1), 1 – 19.
Neary, M., Harrison, A., Crellin, G., Parekh, N., Saunders, G. et al. (2010). Learning Landscape in Higher Education. Lincoln: University of Linoln.
Rands, M.L. & Gansemer-Topf, A.M. (2017). The room itself is active: How classroom design impacts student engagement. Journal of Learning Spaces, 6(1), 26 – 33.
Tuan, T. (1979). Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective. In Gale, S. & Olsson, G. (Eds). Philosophy in Geography. Dordrecht: Reidel.