Learner Led Design

Freemans Bay School is recognised as a Microsoft Showcase School and is a Global Schools Alliance founding member. Late last year we made a video to support our application to continue being a  Microsoft Showcase School. This short video clip shows the development of our school build and how the learner led design is reflected in both pedagogy and learning spaces. Our learner led design has a lens on digital technology, ELearning and developing a future focused curriculum. 

We also had an article published in Learning Spaces magazine. This magazine is published by Association of Learning Spaces and pulls together the views of designers, educators, architects and those interested in promoting modern curriculum through spaces and pedagogy.  The magazine is well worth subscribing to. The article, also shows our thinking around the learner led design at Freemans Bay School,

Vision Led Design

At Freemans Bay School, we strongly believe that it is important to have a clear vision for learning that prepares students for their future. The five-year olds who start school this year will be graduating from Highschool around 2035. We need to think about what sort of spaces they will be working and studying in and join the dots between education space, curriculum design and developing attributes needed for their future world. The Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) design of our new buildings promote flexibility, collaboration, creativity, choice and personalised learning.

Our school vision of "Engage, Enrich, Empower" underpins our plan to align school design and collaborative and flexible ways of teaching and learning. We want our students to experience learning spaces like the modern activity based designed office spaces that many parents experience in their work spaces today, rather than the factory typing pool or hierarchical silo offices of the past.

The item on TV1’s ‘Seven Sharp’ show last week, looked at ILE through a very narrow lens. It was disappointing that the article was so one sided. It did not refer to the New Zealand Ministry of Educations research and evidenced based policy on ILEs accessible on their website. Nor did it refer to any of the research underpinning the global movement towards ILE in education and workplace design.  The  OECD Handbook on Innovative Learning Environments pulls together recent research on ILEs. You can also click here for some of the latest research on ILEs.

The ‘Seven Sharp’ article seems to be promoting teaching in single classrooms in the same way as  in the 1960s or back in even further. The sentiment of, “It worked for me so therefore why change things”, does not have the depth of thinking required to influence schooling design.  It is important to rethink last century school design and align with what we want to happen today. Joining the dots on the best evidenced conditions for learning and attributes required in the workforce beyond 2035 is a priority for school design.

Typical 1960's single cell classroom

Sir Ken Robinson, in his 2010 Ted talk,” Bring on the Learning Revolution”  promotes that for students to meet their creative potential in our schools we must shift from standardised schools to schools that personalise learning and create conditions where learners can discover their passions and flourish.

Our New Entrant Learning Zone

Freemans Bay School vision of "Engage, Enrich, Empower" underpins our plan to align school design, and teaching practice ensuring that students will have the attributes to be successful and happy in their future lives.

Dream Big and Be Brave

We are feeling quite frustrated with the time that it is taking for the the design process of our new school, to become a reality. We have been at master design process now for two years.  As a learning community we need to keep moving and changing to develop our teaching and learning to support the transition to our new school buildings or as if we are already in our new school buildings.

We started with wondering how could the current buildings be reconfigured in a way that they would support collaboration, personalising learning and flexibility.How could we create spaces in the interim that could be rearranged to support collaboration, experimentation and innovation?  Could the current spaces be tweaked so that teachers and learners could move around, have choices on where they could learn? How could we move from regular classrooms with desks and a white board which designated the front of the room to spaces that lend themselves to interdependent, co-operative, presentation areas and a range of gathering spaces?

We were brave! We knocked out walls and created spaces for teams of teachers to collaborate.

The first space we did this with created a learning zone from two old classrooms - we just pushed back the sliding doors and two teachers of Year 3 and Year 4 students worked together. 
The biggest challenge in this space was the acoustics. We added soft furniture and lined the open trusses and this treatment has improved the sound issue. 

The next thing we did was to knock a hole in the wall of another two classrooms - this also created a second space where two teachers could collaborate. Continuing to utilise the premise of Fullan's idea of "Value what you Value" - those teachers who were prepared to work in these spaces were able to choose different furniture to experiment with. This was on the understanding that they would remove their teacher desks and several other pieces of furniture on the "less is more," philosophy. Note the fantastic igloo that these classes have built out of recycled milk containers - as their cave space!  All the furniture in these spaces can be easily shifted so you can have all 60 students together for presentations. Full wireless, AV and interactive white boards, with the addition of mobile TV maximize the impact for students learning and there is a lively learning buzz in these remodelled spaces.

Now look at what we have just done in this term break. This strategy  is even more radical and I think very bold. See the class doors and panels in these learning areas - well they have been removed. Actually 3 classroom entry sections have been removed out of 5 classroom sections in total.

We have created super learning spaces! There are 5 or 6 teachers working in these spaces with up to 180 students. We have essentially created a space that can work for teams of 3 or 2 or across 5 or 6 teachers. The wireless access has also been upgraded and the year 5 and year 6 students have moved to "Bring Your Own Device for Learning". However we already have a ratio of 1:2 computer devices across the school.

The teachers in these super spaces will now trial different ways in how to  utilise the spaces available will add value to the learners experience. They will be exploring the opportunities the new environment provides. Linking back to Fullan's ideas in the previous post - this is a serious physical restructuring that will enable the school vision around learning to be stretched  by teams of teachers and learners. 

The teachers will have opportunities to explore how other schools with super-sized - spaces have utilised their enviroment to support learning. They are also encouraged to reflect on the range of research that is available.

Initially they have been encouraged to discuss the following within their teams:

• What are their agreed ways of working as a team?
• Consider different ways of collaboration, which will they be utilising?
•   -  Co-teaching Models
• Will different areas be utilised for different purposes?  If so what furniture will be needed?
• Learning Studios
• Caves, Campfires and Watering Holes
• Learning Settings
•  Where are the GO TO spaces
• ·         For all?
• ·         For half?
• ·         For teacher groups?
• ·         For a quiet space?
• ·         For working in groups of twos or threes?
• How will students be grouped to support their learning?
• How will student learning be tracked and supported?

They have also been encouraged to look at this work Professor Stephen Heppell which I thought was quite practical and inspiring. Also this  of Melissa Heppells teaching space at IPACA. This will help to visualise different learning spaces and ideas to build on.

These teachers have agreed  to develop their use of spaces in different ways over time. They are all excited about the possibilities. It will be an interesting journey which I will be able to focus on writing about. This will be a real test of the idea that the environment is the third teacher. In our case we are testing the waters as we take our learning vision "Engage, Enrich, Empower" to a new level. We are certainly dreaming big and being very bold and brave in our latest transition strategies.

What are your thoughts about these strategies? Do you believe the environment is an enabler to driving learning vision? Have you any suggestions to share? I look forward to your comments.

Where to start? Extend What you Value!

I always remember reading in one of Fullan's leadership article "Visions That Blind" the statement,  "Extend what you value".

Fullan quotes Shein, (1985) observation "The process of developing collaborative work cultures is complex. It requires great sophistication for school leaders: to express their own values without being imposing; to draw out other peoples values and concerns; to manage conflict and problem solving; to give direction and to be open at the same time".

I often think we feel locked into organisational systems in terms of the way that we do things, and that these ways often go back to how schools were organised in the 1960s or back in even further. We need to rethink last years  organisational structures in our schools to align with what we want to happen today, to drive our vision around personalizing learning to a reality.

In the article above Fullan expresses the need  to have recruitment action to allow for the development of leading collaborative culture in schools. He contends that teacher professional development based on collaboratively developing the school vision is required in the short and long term. This will allow the development of a collective understanding of the learning vision of the school. The areas of focus he suggests are:

• collaborative inquiry
• reflective practice
• growing technical expertise
• restructuring 

A key organisational event that ticked the boxes above that we employed was to create a new leadership position where the school leader, with prestige of salary and release from classroom teaching would lead professional learning and e-learning (blended learning) throughout the school. Effectively this school leader would map the professional learning, curriculum and ICT use in the school. This was an unusual move for a school in New Zealand of under 400 students at the time. It was pivotal to the first restructure of our infrastructure to support strengthening collaboration and personalising learning and coherence around our vision development. 

We decided a good place to start was to define what we want in terms of teaching and learning. What would that look like if it was in place in every learning area of our school. 

This professional learning collaborative inquiry is ongoing.  The model involves collaborative inquiry, reflective practice, growing technical expertise and restructuring. This professional learning model has developed a strong sense of purposeful teaching and learning practice which has led to new ways of organising teaching and learning. This has supported the process of redesigning old spaces, structures and practices that support our vision of "Engage, Enrich and Empower".

This infrastructure change and inquiry based professional learning is a strong transition component for readiness to move into our new buildings in the future. It also led to other innovative organisational and physical changes that support  transition and coherence of our school vision. These I will explore in the next few posts. I look forward to your thoughts.

  

Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view, by Edgar H. Schein. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1985,

Transition to new learning spaces

In 2010 at Freemans Bay School we demolished a large subsiding classroom block and replaced it with a new two story block. Each of these new learning zones has five classrooms based on a studio style with the classrooms surrounding around a large shared space. 

The remaining school buildings have since been identified as past their use by date for various reasons and we are now at design stage to rebuild the rest of Freemans Bay School. The school will basically be a new school and the only buildings that will remain are the ones completed in 2010. This will include 5 learning zones for up to 90 students each, library, administration block, hall  and the outdoor spaces associated with the buildings.

Rebuilding the whole school and creating a new school, staging the demolition, keeping the school running while the building project is in process is a challenge in itself. However the biggest challenge is leading the change management process to align teaching and learning practices with the school vision.

Our school vision of "Engage, Enrich, Empower" underpins our plan to align teaching practice and school vision to innovative learning environments that ensure that students have the skills to be successful in the 21st century. This is a priority for the school and for our leadership team.

I am also interested in influencing our Ministry of Education's national policy and processes that would give traction to aligning teacher practice with design purpose. It makes sense to me to have an educational lens over every stage of the process, including the technical discussions. I believe that schools need to be supported to develop their teaching and learning vision so that their is a readiness to make it happen prior to the shift into the new buildings. The Ministry of Education needs to explore their infrastructure, policy and resourcing to enable this to happen.

I have decided to do a series of posts on my blog to describe and reflect on what we are doing at Freemans Bay School to support our learning communities  transition to their new innovative learning spaces - even though the time frame for them moving into the new learning spaces is probably two years away. 

I am hopeful that some of the followers may join in and make comments for some interactive dialogue. I look forward to utilising this blog to articulating my thinking and to having some sharing from others involved in similar processes.

SEK International School Catalunya

What a stunning setting. We had an hours train ride from Barcelona - then were picked up by the school bus to be taken through the village to this amazing school set on a mountain in Catalunya. Teachers worked with a group of students to build a dream classroom out of recycled materials. Stephen Heppell supported the project at SEK International School in Catalunya. The classroom was an old computer suite. The students went through an inquiry process where they discussed problems about their current classroom learning environments and looked for solutions to address these problems. The students researched the impact of noise on learning, measuring acoustic qualities of their classrooms in the school and explored solutions such as soft furnishings to improve acoustics. Stephen Heppell talks more about this student learner led design project on his blog. The students  wanted to create an environment that supported flexible, fun and learning the way they enjoy. The classroom has an ocean theme, with a sea cave, whiteboard bubbles and lots of fun features. The interesting response from many students in the school is they want their teachers to book the space for learning as they learn better there and teachers agree- so there is a full booking schedule for the room. The classroom and  the students focus on improved  learning in the classrooms is influencing how teachers think about teaching and design of teaching spaces. This clip of Richard Gerver speaking encapsulates this schools philosphy on future focused innovative thinking about learning.

Colegio Montserret

This school has strong consistency with its curriculum across all classrooms and teams focused on multiple intelligences. Specialist subject teaching includes robotics and project based learning. They also have a live streamed TV channel which is streamed with called ” think1.TV”  http://think1.tv/ There is an impressive  new open area for senior students studying International Baccalaureat curriculum. Specialist subject classrooms run along the side of this space with breakouts into adjacent outdoor learning spaces. There is a consistent approach to curriculum  across all year levels where both multiple intelligences and project based learning are woven into a personalised curriculum   http://www.cmontserrat.org/

You can clearly see the students working through their action learning model in this youtube clip

The principal Monika Horsh is well known speaker in the field of creative and innovative thinking. 

Watch out for Monserrat-del-pozo at ICOT in 2015.   I am sure it will be inspiring. She is considered to be the world leader on innovation and change in education.

Personalising learning at Skapskolan.

I was delighted to be hosted by Marcus Lighting  at Skapskolan. http://skapaskolan.se/vad/ This is a small country school that has students from6years old to 12 years old.   Lene Jensby Lange had suggested the visit and set it up for me - and it was an inspirational visit. The ride on the  train and buses were also very enjoyable as we left the  country to  green fields and farmland. Marcus and his co-teacher have mixed age group teaching in differentiated spaces for individualised and group learning. They have utilised every space available in the room - including elevated seating (mountain top) and a cave room  underneath. The room is full of options for working including quiet and collaborative spaces and making spaces. There are lots of nooks and crannies for learners to choose from.   The space challenge has not compromised the schools vision of personalised learning. The students are engaged and have an enthusiastic attitude to their the current learning enviroment. Plans are under way for a building extension creating and upper level. For the extension they will continue to work with architect Peter Lippman, from Australia. Lippman's design  focuses on environmental quality of lighting, air quality and temperature as well as a focus on  student choice and flexibility in how they learn. You could observe the older students caring and encouraging the younger students  both indoors and outdoors. This is due to  the relationship building that happens with the vertical  grouping in the classroom. The take out for me at Skapskolan is how the creative and efficient use of  space for personalising learning is aligned school design with their beliefs around personalising learning. In the literature review completed as part of my travel fellowship research there was consensus that personalising learning is a desire to give students more choice and control over what they were learning and where and how the learning was to take place. In terms of school design this means providing an environment where:  Learning is flexible - in a range of places that could support small groups, large groups or independent activities. Learning is holistic – the whole child and their learning needs supported Learning styles are acknowledged and supported. A range of learning opportunities provided where students are empowered  Students are grouped according to learning stage not age. Reflection, self-management and collaboration incorporated as part of the learning. Personalisation refers to educational systems that prioritise the individual needs of the learner. Such systems focus on an holistic approach to meet each learners needs.  Milibrand (2004,p.8) personalised learning definition is generally accepted,  “High expectations of every child, given practical form by high quality teaching based on sound knowledge and understanding of each child needs”.      The school visit to  Skapskolan and discussions with Marcus and later Lene gave opportunities to consider the literature review findings and observe and discuss how teaching and learning  and  school design reflected and supported the school vision around personalisation.  I felt really inspired by my visit to this small country school. I look forward to news of the  next iteration - I wonder how the learning from the current build will be reflected in the new build?

Reflections on visiting -Vittra Telfonplan Sweden

Following the principle of Swedish free school organization Vittra and designed by Rosan Bosch.This has been hailed  as a wall-free school with differentiated spaces that allow the children to learn side by side on their own terms using laptops. The learning spaces are creative, colourful and innovative. Specialist  rooms such as a dance space and a multimedia lab  permits students  to perform noisy activities without disturbing their peers in the open space.  It is really worth listening to Rosan Bosch and her very clear  philosophy on learning and design - she is quite inspirational - as is the learning spaces at Vittra.  http://www.zillamag.com/architecture/vittra-telefonplan-interior-by-rosan-bosch/ It was interesting that some of the "open" spaces had been put into traditional classrooms recently. Apparently this move was due to pressure from parents - who wanted curriculum to be physically organised into subject spaces and department and faculties. Parents are very focused on national examination results. There is a difficult discord, when parents only experience of education is their own and this conflicts with the vision of student empowerment and personalising learning. Seeing these recent developments at Vittra caused me to reflect on pressure on educators to compromise their vision in high stakes environments.  Vittra was also in the process of appointing a new principal which would strengthen the vision around personalising learning. Rosan Bosh is working with Vittra to establish a new campus in this commercial / industrial area. It will be interesting to see how the design of the new campus develops and the direction that the current campus takes under new leadership. Change of leadership and staff turnover also impacts on sustainability and  schools with a similar vision to Vittra, need to consider how they can continue to develop  journeys of personalisation through change. I observed other schools in UK and Europe that had space for flexibility, collaboration and more student choice over learning but there was a predominance of whole class lessons, didactic style, and the open space was utilised when the "real' work was finished. How can we address the reality gap between our vision of personalised learning and how teaching and learning actually happens?  How can we sustain our vision through change and political and social pressure?

Ørestad Skole, Copenhagen This school was built in 2010.  The school is located in an entirely new area  of  Copenhagen called Ørestad.    Currently the student intake is  5-9 year olds and  is planning to take older students in  the near future.  They are one of the Copenhagen’s specialist schools – the school  vision is to deliver a curriculum that is  virtual and aesthetic. There is a local library next door as part of the premises. Orestad Gymnasium is also  next door. I was impressed  with  the variety of specialist spaces such as art, music,  science, robotics and making models.

   I was interested to find out that  Denmark schools  basically work  in two shifts - the more 

   academic subjects are taken in the morning and in the afternoon they are taught by 

   professionals  I called the "happy life teachers". 

   This is where the programme becomes truly personalised with students choosing from a 

   range of learning  activities including art, dance, robotics, outdoor building and cooking - 

   basically following their interest and passions.

   However this 'free play way" is about to change following resolution of a major dispute 

   between the local authorities and the teachers union. Teachers were locked out for 4

   weeks!     I hope that the strong focus on personalising learning, innovation and creativity 

   will continue as I found the students engaged, motivated and very passionate about

   their learning.