Building Pedagogies. A historical study of teachers’ spatial work in new school architecture

This article addresses schoolteachers’ spatial work in the process of inhabiting and using a new school building. The study focuses on a historical case of a Danish open-plan school built in the early 1970s and shows how the teachers’ spatial work engages with questions of the organisation of bodies, sound, furniture and teaching aids. The article uses Tim Ingold’s notion of making – stressing the making of architecture, as well as pedagogy, as a continuous and never-ending process – and Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism to explore the teachers’ spatial work as part of the intra-actions of and mutual coming into being of school space, pedagogical ideas, teachers and pupils. Finally, the article analyses the transnational entanglements of the teachers’ spatial work through a discussion of the open-plan school as an architectural and pedagogical model found across the globe