Educational Origami

If I asked you to imagine a classroom, it probably would be desks and chairs , a whiteboard and a rectangular room. If I asked you to imagine the people in their in all probability you would envisage students of varying ages and a teacher. This is how I would image a classroom.

Few of us would image a learning common, a classroom with out walls, multiple classes and teachers in a single space.

Its probably fair to say that learning commons, a large learning space which is shared between several classes simultaneously, are at first glance a daunting prospect for most teachers. But increasingly we are seeing this form of school architecture being incorporated into our schools. Certainly new schools in New Zealand are containing this style of learning space.

I think the idea is daunting because it would require me to change. You can not the traditional teaching paradigm, the teacher centric teaching model into these spaces, it won’t work. This is a shared space where you can not hold court without impacting on the learning of the other students, so how you teach must change.

This change must shift the ownership of the learning to the students, they must take responsibility for their own learning, they must be self motivated, organized and prepared. It becomes incumbent on us as teachers to be prepared and organised, we can not use the 6 step process of lesson planning – the last 6 steps into the classroom. Instead we must have clearly structured and outlined approaches to what,where and when we are going to teach.

Changing too, is how we teach, communicate and collaborate with our students. Learning commons facilitate a discover approach to learning rather than a delivery approach. The students must discover the knowledge they need as we can not stand forth and deliver – this lends itself to problem and project based learning.We must explore other avenues for communication with our students, as we don’t have the floor to deliver from, as this would impact on every one else in the space.

Changing to must be the assessment model. Most teachers teach as they do because of the assessment models that are in place.

So the change is the learning space brings for a number of changes to teaching practice, it becomes more student centric, its problem and project based, there is student ownership of learning, flexibility in how the students learn and how they communicate with the teachers. Shifting the students from being potentially passive learners to more active learners. Because of the change in the teaching paradigm the teachers spend more time facilitating and working with students individually or in small groups. Assessment too must change.

These are, in my opinion, good things but I do have to wonder if the spaces are created and there is an expectation that by proximity or occupation teaching practice will change. Are we seeing teacher training shifting to adopt this? Are further changes in assessment in the wind? Hummm, I wonder.