Photo Credit: Fleetwood Furniture
By Murray Hudson
There is
evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, that the learning environment can have
a significant effect on children’s progress and development. Murray Hudson, Managing Director of Gratnells,
looks at some of the innovative ways that environment is changing for the
better
A teacher on his or her feet is worth two in the seat. It’s the
latest call to action from an education world in the midst of transformation. Things are on the move. Indeed, there is no more front of the
classroom, according to the new wave of educationalists. Among them is Alan
Rheault, Chief Furniture Designer at Fleetwood Furniture, a Holland, Michigan-based
manufacturer of school furniture since 1955 and one of the industry’s early
adapters.
“There’s a legacy of innovation here,” says Rheault, pointing to
Fleetwood as one of the first companies to make school furniture mobile by
using wheels. “And today, schools want
teachers interacting with students and moving around different spaces,” he explains.
“There’s also a strong desire for standing height desks. Sitting is the new
smoking.”
The benefits of flexibility and mobility in the classroom are well
documented, placing teachers in a better position to inspire students and
create an environment conducive to achieving excellence.
“Good teachers know that however much they have learned in the
past, today is a different day and you cannot ride yesterday’s horse,” commented
Sir Ken Robinson, New York Times
bestselling author, TED speaker, education and creativity expert. “This sort of
responsiveness can rarely be achieved by standing in front of a room talking at
a group of 25 or 30 kids for lesson after lesson…Such an approach to teaching
by its very nature limits the possibility of connecting with each student
individually.” (Creative Schools)
Another trend shaping the modern classroom takes its cue from those
staple features of daily American life — the main street and the mall.
Collaborative design is on the rise — library and cafeteria layouts are
blending together and common areas like cafeterias are becoming the new study
areas. This trend reflects an understanding that students learn well from other
students. “It’s funny we’re catching on so slowly to this,” observes Rheault.
“If you’re a parent trying to teach your child something, you see that as soon
as they watch another kid do it they learn immediately. The question is how do
you support that behavior?”
Supporting
peer-to-peer learning by increasing flexibility in classrooms and study areas
is one in a series of innovations already gaining traction. An increase in the
flipped classroom — one that focuses on learning and study at home, followed
with homework and collaborative projects at school — is changing the
educational dynamic, as well.
“In the flipped classroom, rather than having a teacher stand in
front of a group of students and lecture on a topic, the students get online
instruction at home,” explained Sir Ken Robinson. “The class time is then used
by the teacher for peer instruction to help students individually if they are
having trouble, to engage students in conversation about the topic, and to
challenge students who are already showing mastery.” (Creative Schools)
An increase in project-based learning is also blending disciplines
together, creating a new climate that demands maximum flexibility in classroom
design. Cabinet manufacturer Whitney Bros of Keene, NH, is responding to the
trend. “Mobility trends are very popular and all the cabinets we’re making now
are mobile,” says owner David Stabler. “Putting cabinets and storage on casters
and organizing classrooms so you can put things away easily and change learning
disciplines quickly — that’s where Gratnells trays come to the fore in terms of
quick pull-out and put-away.”
Whitney is just one member of a community of progressive American
manufacturers recognizing and responding to innovation in the learning
environment. Similar innovations are occurring at Paragon, where are desks
customized with front casters, permitting students to wheelbarrow stations
across the room to fit the needs of the subject or project. Teacher desks are
also mobile so they can be moved around or into other rooms by the teacher.
“Learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom,” observes Cindy Eggebrecht-Weinschreider of Paragon. “It can
happen anywhere.” For this reason, Paragon’s entire product portfolio is
mobile, reconfigurable and customizable to enhance learning, allowing teachers
to engage students and students to become more engaged.
“It is remarkable what you can do if you’re given the right kinds
of furniture,” commented Chicago-based architect Trung Le in the
ground-breaking book The Third
Teacher. “How agile you can make the space, how media-rich you can make it,
how you can engage different modes of learning.”
One of the design world’s best-known
disrupters, Le has been designing remarkable schools around the U.S. and the
world for more than 25 years. He collaborated on the research project that
became his internationally-regarded book on how design can transform the
ecology of learning.
“It opens up
many things,” says Le who we met at The Art Institute of Chicago. “We create
places of learning like this and only once in a while do we take our kids
there, ninety percent of the time they sit in a square room. My perfect vision
of a classroom is that there are no classrooms. Maybe we can go back to the
idea of sacred spaces like churches and plazas that connect people together.
Imagine if a school is not a series of self-contained closed classrooms but a
place of exploration and wonder. We create these spaces all the time, we just
don’t call them schools.”
It’s quite clear that we all need space to learn. Professor Peter
Barrett is the lead author of Clever
Classrooms, an authoritative report on the link between the learning
environment and academic improvement. “There is clear evidence that the
physical characteristics of primary schools do impact on pupils’ learning
progress in reading, writing and mathematics.”
In 2012, I set up the Learning Rooms project — www.learning-rooms.com
— to investigate and promote best practice in the classroom environment. What
we’re seeing now is a fundamental shift in attitude which has rapidly taken on
a global context. As the organization sponsoring the appearance of Sir Ken
Robinson at EDspaces this year, we are seeing a positive response from the U.S.
market to our Learning Rooms philosophy within the classroom and beyond.
Education is happening everywhere and being everywhere demands
flexibility.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Murray
Hudson is Gratnells Managing Director and Chairman. He was Chairman of the
British Educational Furniture Manufacturers Group from 2012 -2016. He spent a
decade as a news and current affairs producer and reporter for the BBC,
covering three U.S. elections and joined the family business in 2000.
EDspaces
Education: Sir Ken
Robinson is the plenary session speaker at EDspaces 2017. He will be speaking on “Creative Schools:
Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up” on Wednesday, October 25 at 9:30 am
in Kansas City, MO. Sir Ken will be drawing on his ground-breaking books Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative
and Creative Schools: The Grassroots
Revolution that’s Transforming Education, urging schools everywhere to
rethink their basic assumptions about intelligence and achievement.
SOURCES:
- Creative Schools Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up – Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica ALLEN LANE; Penguin Random House 2015
- Clever Classrooms Summary Report of the Head Project. https://www.salford.ac.uk/cleverclassrooms/1503-Salford-Uni-Report-DIGITAL.pdf, Professor Peter Barrett, Dr Yufan Zhang, Dr Fay Davies, Dr Lucin da Barrett, University of Salford 2015
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