Space matters: framing the New Zealand learning landscape
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Space matters: framing the New Zealand learning landscape Lucila Carvalho1 · Tom Nicholson1 · Pippa Yeoman2 · Patricia Thibaut3 Received: 31 May 2019 / Accepted: 23 March 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Significant funding is devoted across the world to transforming traditional classrooms into flexible learning environments. These efforts are often motivated by a desire to create learning spaces attuned to twenty-first century competencies, which involve learning how to communicate, collaborate, think creatively, and how to become critical users of technologies engaged in both the consumption and production of knowledge. In New Zealand, these flexible learning spaces are seen as part of innovative learning environments (ILEs), which are conceptualised as ecosystems involving learners, educators, communities, pedagogical practices, knowledge, and digital and material resources, including buildings and furniture. In line with ILEs, the notion of place-based spaces for networked learning foregrounds learning activity as enmeshed in an assemblage of elements—involving physical spaces, artefacts, digital technologies, people, ideas and tasks. In this paper, we adopt a networked learning perspective to frame the New Zealand learning landscape. Key findings from a national survey with 222 primary teachers, 126 secondary teachers and 163 school leaders, show that most teachers and leaders perceived their schools as being in-transition to ILEs. Findings highlight the importance of having a shared vision and leadership dedicated to supporting teachers’ experimentation with new practices in innovative spaces. The survey details the digital and material resources, the social configurations used in classrooms, the types of learning tasks students are engaging in and a range of emergent practices in innovative and traditional environments for learning across New Zealand. Keywords Design for learning · Innovative learning environments · Learning spaces · Primary schools · Secondary schools
* Lucila Carvalho [email protected] 1
Institute of Education, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
2
Educational Innovation Team, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education) Portfolio, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia
3
Institute of History and Social Sciences, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Learning Environments Research
Introduction Schools in New Zealand have recently begun transitioning into new spatial arrangements that disrupt traditional one-to-many classroom configurations with students organised in rows oriented towards the teacher at the front. This move—supported by the Ministry of Education through policy, standards and guidelines (ERO 2018; MOE 2015)—is changing classrooms across the country into flexible learning spaces that often require educators to rethink their teaching and learning practices (Beetham and Sharpe 2013; TKI 2019). Navigating these changes requires experimentation, adaptation and deep consideration about what is valued and what is po
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