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.

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?

Hellerup School - a great place to learn

Hellerup School was built in 2001. It has learning home zones instead of classrooms. Each learning zone is a  home base for 3-4 classes. The learning zones are shared with the pedagogs who take the after school programme. The building is multi storey with connecting areas utilised for learning. Internal timber cladding is a feature and gives a warm feeling with lots of natural light. The library zone is central on the ground floor. The library or information centre is central on the ground floor, creating a welcome through zone for the learning community and with high visibility from every floor.  There are around 100 students per learning hub with about 4 teachers plus support staff. The design incorporates lots of breakout spaces including: ·        rooms within rooms ·        Mountain tops ·        Breakout spaces ·        Specific areas for art / science ·        Physical activity encouraged eg climbing walls / table tennis inside buidling

The staffroom is a particularly impressive. It is an open comfortable space which encourages staff to relax in a 

informal atmosphere. I think it is important for staff to have their own space to take a break from the business of 

the learning zones - and good to give something back to staff to appreciate the work they do.

Visits in Scandinavia Schools via Lene Jensby Lange

The visits in Scandinavia were arranged by Lene Jensby Lange. Lene is founder of Autens which is an educational consultancy that works with schools, local authorities, charities, architects and others to innovate learning spaces dedicated to personalising learning. www.autens.dk   

Lene and her family hosted us in Copenhagen - we had a great time sharing philoophies about curriculum and school design.

Lene took us on a tour of schools that she has been involved with in design. The next few posts are a synopsis of the schools visited in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

Utterslev Skole is a  new school with a focus on nature and science. Their curriculum encourages  project based learning to encourage creativity, curiousity and innovation. The school has regular classroom spaces – whole class teaching with some break out spaces. The curriculum is subject centric – teachers are subject teachers and have their own classroom spaces with breakout spaces that can be used for independent learning.  Creative and personalised teaching based on student choice happens when the students are  with the pedagogs. Their primary department has an integrated after school club – run by pedagogs. Pedagogs are trained to teach creatively with a holistic whole child approach. The science facilites at Utterslev Skole were very impressive. It is an honour for students to be selected to look after the range of animals in the science laboritries.

Stirling Campus Office Block Conversion

Abington Vale Primary Late 2012, Abington Vale Primary school became part of the Northampton Primary Academy Trust. The school saw this as an opportunity for more autonomy to drive the school vision around collaboration. The academy joined together four schools which each became a campus of the Academy. Abington Vale is a primary school across two sites. Park Campus is the original site built in 1968. While in UK on my travel fellowship, we visited Stirling Campus which opened in 2013. The local council purchased Stirling House, a three story commercial office block in 2012. The office block conversion design principles are open, flexible and collaborative. This was the first initiative in the country but apparently it is common to refit commercial buildings as schools in Scandinavia and USA. The academy is committed to developing a dedicated outdoor space for the 4/5/6 year olds and this was under construction while we visited. The driver for building this new primary school was roll growth, as they are expecting more reception students over the next two years.   The council had commissioned a report to consider options for a new primary school and the cost of the commercial building fit out was significantly cheaper than a new build. The 180 reception students currently occupy the ground floor and the principal is working on getting the next levels ready for occupation as these reception students moves through the school. Principal Laura Cichuta is passionate about the spaces and ensuring that as the students move up through the school that the curriculum design of collaboration, flexibility and personalising learning will be consistent. The challenge for the school is that the allocation of space per pupil is less and there was not funding for furniture and computers. However they use lots of different funding routes for solutions to these issues. The take out for me was around the rich discussion had with Laura around the development of teaching and learning. She said that the starting point is working in teams and building those teams. You have to collaboratively work through; ·        How do we organise? ·        How do we make it work?  I was impressed with the fact that whole groups could progress through the building as the school grows- they just move up a level and the next intake moves in to the ground level. The big advantage with this is that the pedagogy, which is aspirational around personalising learning can gradually be imbedded as the school grows. The other huge advantage is the opportunity to experiment and play with the open spaces to consider the possibilities of future learning space and learning design opportunities. The idea of a school in an office block conversion is a bit of a foreign concept in New Zealand, however I can see if carefully designed and with a commitment to indoor as well as outdoor learning spaces - it can be an excellent, economic fit for purpose.

A HIGH RISE SCHOOL IN THE CITY

The Hong Kong Singapore International School is a primary and secondary school built on a steep hillside on Hong Kong Island. To meet the challenge of future roll growth the school has demolished and built over the top of part of the existing building. The existing buildings had to be retained and integrated into the design. This has extended the height of the building and provided more facilities for the growing secondary school creating an amazing high rise school in the middle of the city.

The site size is an incredible challenge. The land area is only  4500 sqm. The planning of the spaces has been thought out to reflect how students are taught. The classrooms are set up as formal traditional teaching spaces and there is a range of specialist spaces: Music, dance, gymnasium, hall, science labs and throughout the campus there are lots of spaces for students to collaborate or relax with friends.

There is a focus on sustainability with gardens utilised for biology lessons, a wind turbine and gardens on the outside wall of the building. There has been a lot of thought put into utilising natural light and optimising air flow for natural ventilation.

Large windows provide views of the surrounding views, including forest, an construction on the new rail link. A  unique feature is see through ‘think tanks’ attached to classrooms as breakout spaces for students to collaborate on their learning tasks. These large windows provide a open environment for teaching and learning.

The school is a 1-1 device school with most school work done through GAFE. 

Once the new rail link is completed it is expected that the roll of the secondary school will increase from 350 to 800. The building is designed to be further expanded for growth to 13 levels in total.

This school is an interesting case study for meeting the challenge of providing a growing school where space  is restricted.

KIWIANA CORPORATE DESIGN... JOINING THE DOTS

JOINING THE DOTS .. FROM 2014 TO 2030
Five year olds starting school this year at Freemans Bay School will graduate to  start in the workforce in the  2030s. We are thinking about what those work places will look like by exploring  the thinking that informs ways of working in leading corporations, universities and other tertiary institutions. Two recent visits in Auckland to the ASB North Wharf Building and Lion Corporation gave an opportunity explore the philosophy behind their new buildings. 

Both corporations  have a focus on the key principles of collaboration, openness, innovation and sustainability. Like the recent school builds we have viewed, these new corporate headquarters breakdown traditional silo ways of working. These designs naturally draw people together  to share, collaborate and innovate through a series of  gathering and meeting places. The key principles of design in these future focused work places join the dots between the ways our students are working in schools today and their role in society in the future.  

ASB NORTH WHARF, WYNYARD QUARTER. AUCKLAND                     
           
Derek Shortt, ASBs property manager, took staff from Freemans Bay School on a tour of the new ASB North Wharf building. The spaces are made up of a series of 'neighbourhoods' and 'boatsheds' - both have a nautical and waterfront theme. Workspaces include places for highly focused individual work, spaces for meetings for small and larger groups to work. The design principles are based on ASBs business vision:

• Choice
• Collaboration
• Community
• Transparency

The principle of collaboration is intrinsic to the building design and to the organisations way of working. Put simply -  "people working togetherto make the outcome of their endeavours better than the sum of individual parts." (Navigating into the Future, ASB North Wharf, Auckland, New Zealand, 2013)-

The ASB design supports freedom of choice, flexibility, sharing expertise and building a powerful creative work community.

LION CORP, FREEMANS BAY, AUCKLAND

Lion Corps new headquarters adjacent to Freemans Bay School in Napier Street is a fun and funky environment. It has a village feel with design elements that  bring together quintessential Kiwiana, with motifs from Cape Reinga to the Bluff.                                                                                                     
Principles of collaboration, innovation and creativity are intrinsic to the Lion Corp fit out. Every aspect has been designed to bring people together throughout the day. People are encouraged to move around and utilise the various work spaces creating opportunities for dialogue as they encounter others while on the move. This creates a village feeling, building community and a sense of physical, personal connectivity and well-being.                                                                                                                                                                                                               

When thinking about design principles for our schools we need to look at other types of building design for inspiration. We need to consider future focused design of corporations, universities, art galleries and museums. When we look at solutions such as these two corporate case studies we can join the dots and aspire to create learning environments that are powerful, creative, flexible, collaborative, open communities of practice.

      

                                                                                      

ITS ALL ABOUT LEARNING - FROM NORTHLAND TO AUCKLAND

In recent years, the design of new and remodelled school in New Zealand  has evolved dramatically from teacher-led, front facing, private, single celled classrooms to student-focused, flexible shared teaching and learning spaces. The opportunity for schools to remodel or rebuild is a catalyst for school leaders and communities to explore school values  and beliefs about effective teaching and learning. The design process is a catalyst to reflect on thinking of the changing nature of learning. The process itself can influence changes in the ways that teachers teach and engage learners in meeting their current and future learning needs. Visits to schools that have been through this process is an opportunity to explore recent trends and thinking about learning and design, the deep thinking behind decisions made and what  the learning  looks like in practice. T The building design can be a driver to develop shared culture around learning that is open, sharing, flexible and collaborative. It reflects the thinking of learning design - the learning philosophy, culture and partnerships around learning.

Te Kura O Pukemiro (click on the link to see slide show)

Te Kura O Pukemiro is in Kaitaia, Northland, New Zealand. This school is a Kura Kaupapa Maori School where the students are delivered their curriculum in through the context of Maori culture, values and the language of Te Reo Maori.  The Kura (school) caters for students from Year 1 to Year 13. 

The connection to tikanga, (Maori cultural values) are explicit in learning and also explicit in the building design. The central courtyard draws visitors into the atea (formal entry) which  leads to the Wharenui (hall). 

The  school  buildings are grouped around the courtyard. Each building is named after a significant ancestor of the whanau (families) of the local area. The open teaching spaces each have an Awhina (break out) space and shared wet areas. The Kura is Kaitiaki  (Guardian) of the adjacent wet lands and bush regeneration, conservation areas care of which is supported by the local community and kura. Conservation and guardianship are common themes in the curriculum. The Kura was built to a Green Star rating.

Hingaia Peninsula School

The vision of this school is for learning to  be collaborative, creative and agile. The building design enables this learning philosophy to take shape through three learning studios. Each learning studio has a large central  learning space and with a break-out spaces which act as 'caves' and 'campfires', The students have access to working individually, in groups or creatively through these break out spaces that are colour coded to their function. Students also have access to a digital production space, including green screen.

Year 1-2, Year 3 -4, Year 5-6 students grouped in the three studios, shared by three teachers.   Each student is assigned to a Whanau (family) leader, who is their learning coach and is the person for the learning partnership between the students family. This teacher supports the students pastoral, and learning needs. The students explain how they learn at Hingaia Peninsula School in this Campbell Live News TV Clip.

The teachers and students are able to combine groups and classes according to student learning needs and interest - in a personalised learning environment.

CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THINKING ABOUT LEARNING AND DESIGN OF NEW SCHOOLS

CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THINKING ABOUT LEARNING AND DESIGN OF NEW SCHOOLS

In 2010 we demolished a large subsiding classroom block at Freemans Bay School and built new learning hubs in a two story building. This building design was scoped to develop flexible spaces to enable teachers to teach and students to learn in a variety of ways.  

The remaining school buildings since have been identified as either leaky or past their use by date. We are now in the Ministry of Education’s new schools building project.

 

The challenge of totally rebuilding Freemans Bay School sparked my interest in thinking deeper about how spaces are designed and used to engage learners.

Visits to schools, universities, libraries and co-corporate organisations in New Zealand and Australis  have  played a significant role in shaping my thinking around design and pedagogy. I have had many rich conversations with; educational, Ministry of Education, architects and business leaders with a passion for exploring change and innovation in their own contexts. 

I am fortunate to be a recipient for the Auckland Primary Principal Association and ASB Bank Travel Fellowship for one school term in 2014.  This is an opportunity to visit schools in UK and Scandinavia to explore school design.

I am interested in how the physical design can drive thinking around teaching and learning.  

Specifically the following key questions are what I am looking at.

Pedagogical

·     What are the beliefs and thinking about learning evident in new schools visited across different countries?

o      the schools key beliefs about learning

o      why they believe it and what does it look like in practice

What does teaching and learning look like in these new design classrooms?

o      role of teachers

o      role of students

o      role of e-learning

How have the new designs enabled new teaching and learning practices to emerge?

o    the processes and preparation for teachers that was required to transition to the new spaces

o     the innovative pedagogies that have emerged due to  new design

o     the types of practices that have emerged in the new spaces (e.g. collaboration, groups, team teaching, social interactions, flexible learning, personalised learning) and how these have changed over time

o     the culture,  leadership and the organisation that facilitate (or impede) innovation pedagogies in design

o     changes of job functions of staff that have emerged to match thinking about pedagogy  within the design

Physical Design

·         How are the school beliefs about learning reflected in space design?

o      ways the learning spaces support the schools thinking about learning

o      the relationships between and significance for learning in particular spaces

o      the relationships between indoor and outdoor spaces and flows and their role in learning

o      changes the school would like to make and why

·         What impact has new school designs had on?

o      students perception  

o      teachers

o      school community

E-learning

·         How has the new physical design supported e-learning?

o    the ways that personalised learning through technologies is supported by the design

o    the types of e-learning practices that have emerged in the new spaces

o    relationships between virtual and built environments

·         What changes have been made to embrace new technologies?

o    how design facilitates  e-learning

o    ways the learning space has enabled evolving forms of pedagogy

 I am very excited to be doing this research and will use this blog to share my findings as I go.

I am also interested in any research on the topic - so if you have any to share please let me know via the comments on the blog.