This presentation, about the link between Values and School Design, was delivered to a National College Phase 3 audience in the UK on the 12th March in Harrogate.
It covers the process between any values base, philosophy of learning, or even habits, frames and competencies to spatial principles, showing how you might reach an understanding of the spatial requirements of any higher order principle.
The output was quite interesting. I ran this session twice, the second being at the National College Phase 3 in Hammersmith the following week.
Determination
In session one we talked about how to make learners more determined. In this, delegates talked about how determination would stem from being able to make mistakes, be in a culture that that was acceptable, and critically be encouraged to go back again and again as needed to get something right. This led towards a discussion of creating a curriculum model based around long term projects with some complex aims and objectives, that learners would be working towards and be supported with.
In turn, this led to a question about how learners controlled time. The idea that they may need to be allowed to be more spontaneous about when they decided to go back and “have another go” led to discussions around learner control of time and space.
In turn, this led to a number of spatial implications. One was the idea of having group project space owned by learners, where they were in control. The second was that they needed both access to resources and equipment on hand, but also storage. Storage was not deemed to be locking something away, but instead being a type of display to inspire and provoke the need to complete works.
Curiosity
The second group looked into the idea of curiosity. They talked about how this should be about giving learners the drive to learn more, to explore with no boundaries to their learning landscape, in control and with more freedom. They wanted learners to be able to take risks without knowing what happens next. An example was being able to dismantle commons objects to try and understand how they worked.
We also talked about how to provide an “emotional hit”, tapping into episodic memories, as a key to unlocking the drive to seek out more experiences.
The delegates talked about how the role of the teacher might need to be inverted, not providing knowledge on tap but helping people find out their own answers.
The issue of time and control came up again – delegates felt that learners would need larger, more flexible “chunks” of time rather than moving around every hour, with freedom to take breaks when they needed.
Spatially, there was recognition that the school site is only one of a number of locations that might be suited for increasing curiosity, and that more out of school experiences should be provided.
In Conclusion
Both of these discussions took place in less than 10 minutes of thinking time, yet contained a number of ideas which broke most of the “scripts” for how learning currently takes place. It would be interesting to work with a group over a few days developing these ideas more rigorously across a range of values/philosophies, and then seeing how the ideas cross pollinate.
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