Plans and Pedagogies: School Design as Socio-Spatial Assemblage

The concepts in this chapter were originally presented in the Journal of Architecture in 2013, addressing a design oriented audience. The research findings are included in this book to ensure an educational audience has the opportunity to see the links between pedagogy and space which were encountered in this study. The design of learning environments at every level from primary to tertiary is undergoing major transformations involving the proliferation of new learning spaces that are variously termed learning ‘streets’ or ‘commons’, ‘meeting’ spaces and ‘outdoor learning’ areas together with complex new interrelations and overlaps between them.1 Such changes are largely driven by long standing changes in pedagogical theory and practice that may be broadly described as a recognition of both formal and informal learning and a move from teacher-centred to student-centred learning. The traditional classroom is a product of a teacher-centred pedagogy, framing a hierarchic relation between teacher and students while closing out other activities and distractions. It is also a form of what Foucault (1979, 1980) terms a disciplinary technology where the gaze of authority works to produce a normalized and disciplined subject. It has long been clear that student-centred pedagogies are seriously constrained by traditional classrooms. What is not so clear is how new forms of open school environments are matched to the new pedagogies. The primary goal of this paper is to critically analyse a range of recent celebrated middle-school plans within such a theoretical and pedagogical framework