Learning and Design: “The classroom is obsolete”

Environmental scientists have published dozens of studies that show a close correlation between human productivity and space design. This research clearly demonstrates that students and teachers do better when they have variety, flexibility, and comfort in their environment—the very qualities that classrooms lack.

As most people around PDS now know we are about to take a strip of rather gloomy but good-sized classrooms, capture  a sun-filled corridor and extend the space into the outdoors as part of a redesigned learning community for grades 6 through 8.

Prakash Nair is a founder of Fielding Nair International, an award winning school design company.  Last year FNI consultants worked with trustees,, faculty and administration to help design this new space. You can see some of the preliminary drawings and ideas here.

Whenever I begin describing this people usually get both excited and concerned. Excited because the project sounds wonderfully freeing, shiny and new. Worried because invariably someone has a personal memory of a failed open classroom experiment from an earlier decade.

While this project is about breaking down walls it is primarily about  creating spaces that enable and enhance rather than control and inhibit options for learning.

I’ve started a collection of photographs on Pinterest about how and where and with whom and what children at PDS learn. Yes they learn sitting at a desk in a classroom listening to a teacher but that “information delivery system” is just a small part of the picture.

This design expands the amount of available learning space by incorporating the “dead” space of the sunny corridor through creating rooms that can be opened up and from where children can spill as the learning needs dictate. (Rather in the way the Chapman Room is often used now by classes and groups.)

Our design for learning has always been a constructivist. Children start from what they know and through action, interaction and engagement  with ideas and objects they build new understandings and skills.

We need  space that allows for the kinds of work our teachers and learners already do. In the middle school children learn in large groups,

small groups and by themselves. They learn in places that are full of buzz and humming with activity and they learn where quiet allows for contemplation and reflection. They learn at desks, on the floor, curled up, stretched out, on the move and sitting down. They learn from books, at screens,  from teachers and with each other. They use text books, modelling clay, laptops, pencils, interactive white boards, paper, paint and potting soil. They learn by listening, talking, trying, playing, moving,  tinkering, debating, struggling, performing, failing, memorizing, watching, writing, creating, rehearsing and becoming themselves

They learn science, history, language, poetry, geography, art, music, robotics, design, self expression, appreciation, ethics, empathy and all the infinite variety that goes into what it means to be human and to learn, to laugh, to live and to care. They learn to belong and to be part of a community at school and the world.

If that is what middle schoolers do, then we need the best possible spaces where it can happen. We need form to follow function and to do so in ways that stimulate the imagination, stir curiosity and allow for children to do the work they need to do.

Prakash Nair thinks effective learning environments should support an education that is:

(1) personalized;

(2) safe and secure;

(3) inquiry-based;

(4) student-directed;

(5) collaborative;

(6) interdisciplinary;

(7) rigorous and hands-on;

(8) embodying a culture of excellence and high expectations;

(9) environmentally conscious;

(10) offering strong connections to the local community and business;

(11) globally networked;

and (12) setting the stage for lifelong learning.

What do you think?