‘What if… re-imagining learning spaces‘ is one of a series of Futurelab publications in the Opening Education ‘blue skies’ series.

It does not address the questions of design quality but asks the following questions:

1. What are the educational visions and debates needed to underpin the design of new educational institutions?
2. What are the digital resources which may reshape the practice of learning in the 21st century?
3. What alternative visions could be conceived for the schools of the future?

In the chapter entitled Building ‘educational visions’ Tim Rudd, Carolyn Gifford, Jo Morrison and Keri Facer suggest that building schools of the future is about building learning environments in which learning will happen in the future. It is first and foremost about education, not architecture. It is about fostering learning relationships, not just combining bricks and mortar. They go on to stress that if these spaces are going to work, we need to know what sort of educational visions and interactions and practices we want to take place in them, and to build from that vision to design the spaces, resources and environments to support them. We need what Torin Monahan calls the ‘built pedagogy‘.

Chapter 3 entitled ‘Alternative educational visions: What if…?’ explores the possible options which could be considered if we could re-design our education system from scratch. This then explores several future scenarios including;

1. The ’personalised pod’
2. Zoned workflow spaces
3. The learning landscape
4. Old place, new space
5. Disused place, new space
6. Mobile production hubs
7. Augmented reality
8. Virtual reality
9. The Trans-porta cabin
10. Ubiquitous, ambient and pervasive technologies.

‘2020 and beyond. Future scenarios for education in the age of new technologies‘ also produces some scenarios from a digital technology perspective. These are:

1. Personal devices
2. Intelligent environments
3. Computing infrastructure
4. Security
5. Interfaces

In each of these Hans Daanen and Keri Facer identify the overarching big message offered by developments in the field and offer scenarios of how these developments may translate into everyday experiences and then they go on to explore some of the implications of these developments for educational objectives, institutions and practices.

Of course NCSL point out “scenarios” are descriptive pictures or stories that help individuals and organisations understand the complexities and uncertainties in a wider context. They are tools and not predictions. They help to shape and not forecast the future. They reflect national and global trends we see at work today in different societies and economies of the developed world. We can translate these into imagined, probable futures that sharpen our awareness of long term alternatives.

That is precisely what the NCSL BSF Leadership programme is designed to achieve and, following a pilot stage, the programme is about to be launched in the autumn for the next waves of the BSF programme.

In partnership with the OECD and the Innovation Unit for the ‘Picture this’ resource to support personalised learning NCSL have identified 6 scenarios to assist BSF Leadership teams in the planning process.

The six are grouped under three broad trends of:

1. Maintaining the status quo
2. Re-schooling
3. De-schooling

This trend is further developed in another Futurelab publication as part of the ‘Opening Education’ series. ‘Towards new learning networks‘ where Tim Rudd, Dan Sutch and Keri Facer ask the questions:

1. What should the educational landscape of the future look like?
2. What types of institutions, spaces and places for learning should we see develop?
3. Where and with whom should learning happen?

They go on to challenge a number of fundamental assumptions, which have historically underpinned the organisation of education.

1. Expertise and knowledge are not restricted to within classrooms
2. “learning” and “schooling” are different things
3. equity means “one-size-fits-all”
4. opportunities for networked, collaborative and distributed learning could be more cost effective than “within the walls of a school”.

They argue strongly and coherently for a move away from the institutionalised logic of the school as a factory, to the network logic of a community which moves beyond the current concept of the extended school.

The challenge which now faces the government, partnerships for schools ,local education authorities and the consortiums bidding to build the schools for the future is “if, what and where should we build?”

If they are too conservative we will end up with “schools of the past” for the future, same structures and system in shiny new glass and chrome. On the other hand how do we build for “learning communities”?

That is the problem with education….it just raises more questions!

Bob Harrison is a teacher, school and college governor ,NCSL, DIUS and Becta consultant and education adviser for Toshiba Information Systems. He is writing in a personal capacity and can be contacted at www.setuk.co.uk

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