Learning Spaces was one of three themes covered during discussion day. The presentations and outcomes will be available shortly. I’ll start with a short summary and then follow up with posts about issues that arose or particularly interest me.

Tim Rudd (Senior Researcher in Futurelab’s learning team) kicked off the Learning Spaces sessions by looking at the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. He raised a number of issues detailing limiting contexts and practical constraints under three headings:

1. Problems and challenges.
2. Pre-engagement and visioning.
3. Co-design and stakeholder participation.

Tim and Tash Lee have already stirred this pot in their posts ‘Who should be responsible for Building Schools for the Future?’ and ‘Building schools right now, very quickly, without thinking about the future too much.’

Tim discussed:

• Lack of alignment with current policy contexts, particularly personalisation.
• Lack of wider public debate about the ‘big questions’ - the nature of education etc.
• Re-designing learning spaces needs to support community regeneration.
• The need for digital tools to help people think differently.
• Absence of transformational visioning and a central repository / resource of ideas, alternative models of education and perspectives.
• BSF timescales discouraging upfront visioning.
• The barriers of institutional logic and a risk averse society.
• The need for pedagogically informed design.
• Weak co-design and stakeholder participation.
• The importance of the design process as experimentation - and the need for adequate time to do this.
• Future learning possibilities.

Questions and comments from the floor included: the implications of the raising of the learning age; why virtual learning spaces were not mentioned and the potential of the early years practice to inform curriculum / pedagogy and design in schools.

Tim summarized his session by flagging the big issues and unresolved questions that need a wider informed public and professional debate. How can we go truly into BSF without this grounding and without some clearer view of the educational system we wish to develop?

Matthew Bell (CABE) followed with a session Learning spaces: perspectives on design.
Matthew is the Director of Campaigns and Education at CABE. His brief includes leading CABE’s engagement with motivating consumers and young people to learn about and demand good design; and influencing emerging government policy on the procurement of schools. CABE’s role in BSF is to assist LAs in Wave 4 to assess proposals.

Matthew made three key points:

1. Technology is of secondary importance to appropriate learning design.
2. Demand is essential - poor schools result from poor client brief and lack of stakeholder consultation. (This needs to start early and requires design literacy).
3. Learn through spaces, not just in them (CABE have a programme for pupils - learning about and through design).

Matthew discussed:

• Why good design matters - positive impacts on attainment, attendance and behaviour.
• The policy contexts and how these generate new influences and issues for school design.
• Endless list of stakeholders - it’s still not clear where power should lie in the stakeholder team.
• CABE’s role in improving quality of what’s being built, in design education (learning spaces / design education and new secondary curriculum theme opportunities) and assisting LAs to assess proposals.
• Quality outcomes starting prior to procurement.
• 10 key points for good school design.
• How pupils idea of good school design aligns with 10 key points.
• Good and bad design (Matthew showed some quite depressing school designs alongside more effective ones).
• Use of sites and public / community presence. The challenges of community access.
• Outdoor space and use for learning.
• Relationship of external and internal space.
• Issues of robustness and materials.
• Flexibility - permitting expansion / contraction / redesign over time.

Questions and comments from the floor included: the benefits of having an architect on school governing body; engagement of student voice; user involvement / engagement - do we need more insights? Where does FE go for advice? Is there evidence that designs are being influenced by new educational visions and are there exemplary examples of digital technologies embedded in new schools?

Imagining the Future
Keri Facer (Futurelab’s Research Director) introduced the audience to the Beyond Current Horizons project and the question of how we grapple with imagining the future. She stressed that it isn’t a simple matter of crystal ball gazing and predicting but rather a multiplicity of methods including monitoring trends and horizons, drawing in stakeholder perceptions, building scenarios, looking at scope and levels of enquiry. Keri briefly went through the three phases of the project, the five challenge areas and 6 areas of enquiry. The importance of imagining a desirable future (as opposed to what we don’t want) was emphasised.

Our groups then set about responding to seven prompts to help us envision what the future in 2025 might look like in relation to our themes.

• Questions for the Oracle about 2025
• Our vision for education 2025 includes…
• What will education 2025 look like if we don’t succeed?
• What needs to change?
• What needs to be done now and by whom?
• What will stand in the way?
• What successes and failures can we learn from?

The responses were very briefly shared within the groups and within a whole conference plenary and will be available with the presentations.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under BSF, design, education policy, future, futurelab, innovation, learning spaces, schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.