No, this won’t be yet another blog post in which I criticise open learning spaces (I rarely do that anyway). Instead, it is about a fascinating new Finnish study. It is in line with a previous study also in Finland.  What makes this study interesting is not so much the question of whether open or flexible learning environments are good or bad. Markku Lang and colleagues ask a different and intriguing question. Specifically, what actually happens to the pedagogical dreams built into such a building once teachers and students start using it?

To find out, they first examined the plans and design documents of fifteen Finnish schools. They then took a much closer look at four schools, observing how five so-called shared learning spaces were actually used. Among other things, they used time-lapse cameras and noise measurements. And what they found was a considerable gap between how these spaces were imagined and how they were actually used.

Beautiful plans

And these dreams about pedagogy were certainly evident. As the researchers investigated the school design plans, it became clear that the common areas would not be just passages with chairs placed here and there. No, on the contrary, the documentation clearly indicated their relationship to collaboration, co-teaching, differentiation, individual learning, flexible grouping, and increased student autonomy. In 14 out of the 15 schools, these common learning areas were included in the design plan either explicitly or implicitly, for these specific reasons. Collaborative learning and co-teaching were mentioned in 87 per cent of the plans. Individual and group learning were mentioned in 80 per cent. In addition, flexible grouping was mentioned in 73 per cent.

But wait. Ideas such as flexibility, collaboration and inclusion may sound wonderful, but they can become essentially contested concepts. Everybody has a vague idea of what they mean, but what do they actually look like on a Tuesday morning, just after the first break? Who will use which space? For what? Who will supervise? And how do you combine students working there with students simply passing through?

In many of the plans, all of this remained, well, vague. Fewer than half of the design documents contained concrete descriptions of how the shared spaces would be scheduled, supervised or supported with pedagogical resources. Sometimes it remained at the level of terms such as flexible space, common area, modern environments or future-proof.

And then the school (and reality) moves in

One of the nice things about this study is that the researchers did not limit themselves to what people said they did with these spaces. They installed time-lapse cameras and recorded what was actually happening at ten-minute intervals throughout the school day. In some of the spaces, they also measured noise levels. Reality turned out to differ quite substantially from the original plans.

Across the spaces studied, independent learning was observed during 41 per cent of the observation periods. Teacher-scaffolded activities occurred 17.8% of the time. Teacher-led whole-group activities accounted for only 9.4 per cent of observations. And co-teaching, despite being one of the dreams so often associated with such spaces, was not observed even once.

At the same time, these spaces were mainly… ordinary spaces in a school. Students walked through them, waited there, talked to each other or spent their breaks there. Students moved through these spaces a lot: almost 40 per cent of the observation periods showed high levels of circulation. They also used the spaces during breaks more than 42 per cent of the time. Where the researchers measured noise, levels rose above 60 decibels for roughly a third of the time.

It wasn’t the teaching that caused most of that noise. Noise levels peaked during lesson transitions and breaks. Imagine large numbers of students moving through the spaces. I think you can hear it yourself from that description. So, the very spaces designed to support learning often doubled as thoroughfares.

The daily rhythm of a school space

Another finding from the study is that the researchers identified something resembling a daily rhythm. Especially in the morning, roughly between 8:00 and 10:30, the shared spaces were used for the pedagogical activities they were designed for. As the day progressed, they increasingly became transitional spaces, informal meeting places or places for relatively quiet independent work. Which doesn’t seem entirely illogical when you stop to think about it.

The authors speculate about what might explain this pattern. Maybe it’s because of scheduling. Or the subjects being taught at different times of day can have an influence, or maybe teachers’ preferences and routines. Also, the design of the environment mattered. Larger spaces with good sightlines accommodated a wider range of activities, while smaller or more cluttered spaces limited the range of activities. At one of the schools in the study, a building designed for 900 students was being used by 1,000. A shared space intended to serve multiple pedagogical purposes ended up functioning mainly as a social area and passageway.

Architecture is still not pedagogy

The earlier study I blogged about showed how two teachers could use a very similar open learning environment in very different ways. This new study approaches the issue from a different angle, yet its conclusions point in the same direction.

A building creates affordances, but it does not impose a pedagogy. Just as education often adapts technology more than technology changes education, the same may be true of building design.

You can design a space for collaboration without collaboration actually taking place. You can draw a space for co-teaching without two teachers ever teaching there together. And you can build flexibility into a school without specifying who should use it, when, or for what.

The researchers use the concept of affordances: the possibilities that an environment offers. Their conclusion is that such spatial possibilities do not in themselves guarantee pedagogical change or improvement. What ultimately happens also depends largely on factors such as the layout, student movement, furniture, and, for sure, what teachers actually do with those possibilities.