Teacher training

How can teachers move from traditional to innovative learning environments?

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What do we really know about how teachers can use the wonderful innovative learning environments being created for schools around the world?

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Stonefields School, Auckland, New Zealand

Graduate researchers (architects, designers, educationalists) around the world are tackling issues such as this, but often in isolation. The ‘Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change’ (ILETC) project, based at the University of Melbourne, Australia, aims to bring this thinking together through its series of one-day ‘transitions’ symposia which this year will also be held outside Australia – in the UK (London) on 7th September and in the US (Grand Rapids, Michigan) on 14th September. The symposium in Melbourne will be on 2nd June. It will be interesting to learn where the research on this is at. Continue reading →

A Lever for Learning

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The quality of the physical learning environment can leverage good teaching but cannot replace poor teaching. Can we help teachers make better use of this lever?

How can the physical learning environment become a lever for better teaching and learning?

How can the physical learning environment become a lever for better teaching and learning?

A few weeks ago I asked a group of educationalists how much training teachers get in manipulating space. My thinking was, well shouldn’t they? After all space is complex, you can create all sorts of spaces for different things to happen. Indeed how you ‘decorate’ a space influences how people feel in it. How you arrange the furniture affects how you can effectively use different teaching approaches. The answer was, Continue reading →

Creating Space to Re-imagine the Learning Environment

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How can we better help teachers imagine the changes they need to make to improve their learning environment?

Manipulating the space. What can we do here?

Manipulating the space. What can we do here?

If you believe, as I do, that effective design and use of space springs from engaging in meaningful dialogue, then we should be better at how and where we conduct these conversations, and indeed with whom. Continue reading →

Talking to Trainee Teachers in the Coldest City on Earth

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Designing Schools for the Coldest City Earth – Part 2

I have just been talking to a group of trainee teachers in Yakutsk about the design and use of space in schools. I was invited by the Education Institute of the North Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk.

The audience of trainee teachers at the Education Institute, North Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk

The audience of trainee teachers at the Education Institute, North Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk

In most schools the design is very conventional although teachers and government are very open to looking at different ways of approaching school design. For my own part it was good to be able to learn about how they teach in their education system and what ideas from other places may work there, as well as impart what I have learned from other places. Continue reading →