Learning spaces and pedagogic change: envisioned, enacted and experienced

Abstract

Building on work in how spaces of learning can contribute to the broader policy agenda of achieving pedagogic change, this article takes as its context the Building the Education Revolution infrastructure programme in Australia. Deploying a sociomaterial approach to researching learning spaces and pedagogic change and drawing on data from interviews conducted with senior leaders, teachers and students in schools with flexible learning spaces, we report on pedagogic change as envisioned for, and enacted and experienced in, these spaces. It was found that there is no causal link between learning spaces and pedagogic change. Rather, pedagogic change is encompassed within multiple sets of relations and multiple forms of practice. We see promise for the emerging field of learning spaces in thinking about space from a relational, sociomaterial perspective. This approach pursues a non-dualist analysis of the space–pedagogy relation and offers less deterministic causal accounts of change than those that are commonly made in the popular and policy literatures.

Keywords:

• learning spaces
• pedagogic change
• sociomaterial approach
• actor-network theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Victoria is a major state within Australia. Given Australia’s federal political structure, responsibility for education lies with individual states.

2. Reference is also made in policy material to terms like constructivist learning, active learning, inquiry project-based learning and individualised learning each of which can be considered to also sit under this broad umbrella.

3. Space does not permit an exploration of the observational or ‘naturally occurring’ data. See however, Mulcahy (2015).

4. This observation (or a version of it) was made by Winston Churchill in a speech delivered in the House of Commons on 28 October 1944. Having sustained heavy bombing damage during the Battle of Britain, the House of Commons was being rebuilt.