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Finnish National Board of Education
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:1PERSPEC
TIVES FRO
M FIN
LAN
D – Tow
ards new learning environm
ents
PERSPECTIVES FROM FINLAND– Towards new learning environments
Marko Kuuskorpi (editor)
Publications 2014:1
In collaboration:
PersPectives from finland – towards new learning environments
Marko Kuuskorpi (editor)
Publications 2014:1
© Finnish National Board of Education and the authors
ISBN 978-952-13-5689-6 (pb)ISBN 978-952-13-5690-2 (pdf)
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contents
The school of the future – now! ...................................................................... 4
Preface ................................................................................................................ 5
Kristiina Kumpulainen & Anna Mikkola. Researching learning across space and time in extended learning environments .............................. 9
Harri Ketamo. Games as learning environments .......................................... 23
Merja Meriläinen & Maarika Piispanen. Live-roleplay as a tool – using real world operation cultures as tools for learning .................. 47
Marko Kuuskorpi & Nuria Capellos Gonzáles. Physical learning environments: learning in the future .................................................... 63
Jukka Sulonen & Krisse Sulonen. The Grammar of a Modern School Building. A comparative study on schools and the changing ways of learning ............................................................................................. 78
Anne Malin & Päivi Palojoki. Multi-voiced planning for redesigning home economics classrooms ................................................................ 102
Authors .......................................................................................................... 123
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the school of the future – now!
We are currently having an interesting and passionate discussion about the knowledge and skills that pupils and students need to acquire in school in order for them to face the society of the future. The contents of education and working methods involved are being discussed, but equally important is to address the significance of learning environments for learning – what the working environment of the 21st century school will be like, that is, what the future school will be like. Studies suggest that the physi-cal learning environment has a clear effect on learning outcomes and content-ment in school. The contents of education, its forms and working methods may change rapidly, whereas the built learning environment is markedly more static. Old school facilities, which were designed based on the idea of a cor-ridor and classrooms, do not necessarily support the present and future educa-tional practices and working methods in the best possible way. In most cases, the future school already exists, that is, it has already been built – how flexibly the existing facilities can be modified plays a key role in accommodating new and changing needs in the school activities. Instead of controlling learning and schoolwork, the facilities should support them.
The articles included in this publication present a number of perspectives on physical and virtual learning environments that support future learning. The articles are based on lectures given at the CELE 2012 seminar organized by University of Turku and City of Kaarina.
On behalf of Finnish National Board of Education, I thank City of Kaarina and especially principal Marko Kuuskorpi as well as all the authors for providing this publication!
Jorma KauppinenDirectorGeneral Education departmentFinnish National Board of Education
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Preface
The CELE 2012 – conference “A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS – Transforming Learn-ing Environments Through Dynamic Local Partnership” was organized in a collaboration with the city of Kaarina and the University of Turku, the Depart-ment of Teacher Education, Rauma Unit, Finland, 22 – 24 February 2012.
The articles of this publication are based on the presentations of some of the keynote speakers and participants in the different workshops. We address our warmest thanks to all the contributors for taking their time to share their ideas and thoughts. We also thank OECD and the Finnish National Board of Educa-tion for supporting the conference and the latter for publishing this book.
In the first article “ Researching learning across space and time in extended learning environments” Kumpulainen and Mikkola argue that education has to be changed to meet the challenges of 21st century learning and learners. They ask “how today’s schools can be transformed to become environments of learning and teaching that make individuals lifelong learners and prepare them for the 21st century?” In this article Kumpulainen and Mikkola introduce the notion of chronotope as a conceptual heuristic through which they ap-proach learning as a holistic experience that stretches beyond formal and in-formal spaces. They illuminate how space and time are organized in students’ technology-mediated collaboration learning practices. The empirical study was conducted in 2011 in a Finnish elementary school of 240 students in grades 1 to 6 and 16 teachers, in the Helsinki district. The focus of the study was in 21 fifth and sixth graders whose task was to produce scripts for a school musical. The students worked with personal laptops, wireless Internet access, and collaborative writing service, at school and outside. The chat data and the revision history of the scripts were saved. The students also answered to an online questionnaire illuminating their accounts of the technology-mediated creative learning practices. The findings of the study provide evidence of the emergence of a novel chronotope in which the students engaged in ubiquitous, multimodal, and multidimensional, technology-mediated, creative learning practices that broke away from traditional school-based practices.
Ketamo has developed learning games to mathematics. He has spent many years exploring how to apply technological solutions to teaching in a
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pedagogically meaningful ways. Developing has been based on the idea that when studying is fun learning results will improve. Digital games based learn-ing environments offer a great potential, not only for learners but particularly for teachers and parents. This fact, however, has been forgotten when discuss-ing how games motivate children and how this gamified motivation should be applied in education. In his article Ketamo focuses on the two themes that make games very interesting from the parents and teachers point of view: 1) adaptation to individual learning needs and 2) how to apply detailed learning analytics that gamified environments make possible.
Meriläinen and Piispanen view in their article “Live-Roleplay as a tool – using real world operation cultures as tools for learning” pedagogical changes in dif-ferent learning contexts in order to create a theoretical background for educa-tors who are designing learning based on contextual pedagogical approach to-wards learning. They state that the pedagogical knowledge has to meet the 21st century skills as well as the curriculum contents to be able to create learning situations, task, activities and environments that will develop 21st century civil skills pedagogical content knowledge in school context. They also ask: what is good pedagogic – how does learning take place?
In their article Meriläinen and Piispanen point out that “learning should be seen as a conceptual change in the interaction with the environment”. In this change a teacher has a crusial role. To meet the challenges of 21st century they use civil skills pedagogical content knowledge (CSPCK) framework that includes three primary forms of knowledge: 21st century civil skills knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and curriculum content knowledge. According to them, all the above mentioned knowledge areas together will form a success-ful and pedagogically meaningful learning processes produced by students. Meriläinen and Piispanen highlight that learning should take place more and more in authentic and enthusiastic learning environments.
Kuuskorpi and Cabellos González explore the question: what will tomorrow’s physical learning environments be like? The authors tackle the problem of defining the concept of a physical learning environment and consider differ-ent aspects of this entity. The empirical study is based on a development pro-ject called Forum for the Future, which took place in six European countries during the years 2009–2011. In the project, students, teachers, administrative school authorities and various expert groups such as policy makers, archi-tects, interior designers, artists and information technology specialists were asked to identify the components that make learning spaces that are of good quality and modifiable. The process simulation method was used to provide
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a prime example of a learning space that supports teaching and learning oper-ations, while demonstrating flexibility, sustainability and modifiability. Accord-ing to the study of Kuuskorpi and Cabellos González, expectations for physical learning environments did not differ significantly between countries. All par-ticipants in 2013 recognised that it is absolutely necessary to make changes to the physical learning environment in order to respond to the challenges posed by the needs of its users, different teaching and learning methods ranging from individual study to large group work, changes in schools operational culture as well as future technological advances and developments in social networks and media. The authors conclude that it is necessary to take the main users – teachers and students – into the planning process of spatial solutions when developing the school into a dynamic physical learning environment.
The article by Sulonen and Sulonen emphasizes that when viewing schools from pedagogic objectives and school comfort it is important that they are places that inspire the users. The article is based on the results of a disserta-tion on the subject. The writers aim is to answer two questions in the article:
1. How do the users observe and experience the facilities in their school buildings and what kinds of spaces and things are considered positive?
2. What can be concluded about the usability of school buildings that are designed according to contemporary pedagogic views, as learning environments operating according to modern objectives?
The writers divide the learning spaces to places of teaching, places of doing, places of information retrieval, places of encountering, and places of retreat. These spaces can have several roles and possibilities, and they can be used in various ways of learning. The writers connect the grammar of a modern school building with concepts formal and informal, and quality criteria. The research data was collected in schools that were built between the years 2000–2005. The method used was a guided tour, a walkthrough method that originates from environmental psychology. The results showed that a physical environ-ment affects learning, wellbeing and school satisfaction.
In a school building there are various learning spaces designed for different kind of topics. In many schools one of these is a home economics classroom. Also this classroom should meet the new standards for learning in the 21st century. It is obvious that we should understand the changes in modern soci-ety and the changes they have caused in homes. In their article “ Multi-voiced planning for redesigning home economics classroom” Malin and Palojoki con-centrate in two main questions:
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1. What kind of new demands pose a challenge for the planning of home economics learning environments?
2. What kind of multi-voiced planning occurs in the home economics classroom planning process?
The focus of this article is based on the criteria (technical, functional and be-havioral) created by Malin (2011), and analyses of the discussions in planning meetings in which different professionals (commissioners, planners and teach-ers) took part. These meetings were recorded, and an analysis was conducted of how the criteria were used in the planning process of new home economics classrooms. When planning new home economics classrooms at least three criteria should be acknowledged: technical criteria, functional criteria, and be-havioral criteria. Multi-voiced planning proved to be very successful in many ways. During the meetings four different kinds of voices could be recognized: techno-mechanistic voice, esthetic-visual voice, functional voice and social-functional voice. The articles have been peer reviewed. We gratefully thank all the reviewers for their co-operation.
24.10.2013
Marjaana Soininen Tuula Merisuo-Storm Professor of Didactics PhD, Adjunct professor
Tomi Kärki Marja-Leena RönkköPhD, Senior Lecturer of Mathematics PhD, Senior Lecturer of Craft and Design
Department of Teacher Education, Rauma UnitUniversity of Turku, Finland
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Kristiina Kumpulainen and Anna Mikkola
researching learning across space and time in extended learning environments
abstractThis paper is grounded on an argument that understanding learning in dy-namic and extended learning environments, which address 21st century re-quirements, calls for reconsidering and further developing learning theories and analytical concepts. As a response to this call, we introduce the notion of ‘chronotope’ as a conceptual heuristic through which to approach learning as a holistic experience that stretches across space and time. We shall enrich our theoretical elaboration of the concept of chronotope via an empirical case study of elementary school students’ technology-mediated creative learning practices. Here, we focus on the social practices of 21 students who worked with personal laptops, wireless Internet access, and a collaborative writing service, in and outside school, to collaborate on creating a school musical script. In specific, we illuminate how space and time are organized in students’ technology-mediated collaborative learning practices. It is contended, that a chronotopic analysis provides a fruitful analytic tool for developing an under-standing of the ways in which novel space-time configurations are constructed in and for 21st century learning.
introductionIt is widely argued that education needs to change for 21st century learners and learning. The traditional concept of schooling, based on a re-production model which includes one classroom, one teacher, one class, and one subject at a time, is being increasingly questioned (e.g. Dumont, Istance & Benavides 2010; Facer 2011; Säljö 2012). Living and learning in a digital and globalized society requires skills, competencies, and dispositions that cannot be ade-quately addressed by narrow and product-oriented views of education and schooling. The learning requirements of the 21st century, such as critical think-ing and problem solving, collaboration and communication, creativity, and the application of new literacy and media skills are challenging or even impossible to promote in an educational environment that is restricted to a specific space and time and that is purely teacher-led and controlled (Lemke 2004; Trilling & Fadel 2009). The ultimate question is: how can today’s schools be transformed
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to become learning and teaching environments that make individuals lifelong learners and prepare them for the 21st century?
Development efforts in education have addressed the importance of extend-ing traditional space-time configurations of schooling, and connecting school learning with students’ whole learning lives, activities, tools, and identities situ-ated within and across formal and informal settings, including virtual spaces (Brown & Renshaw 2006; Facer 2011; Madge, Meek, Wellens & Hooley 2009; McLeod & Yates 2006). Here, learning is understood as part of living in dif-ferent socio-cultural contexts, not as something that takes place exclusively in the restricted spaces of formal education (Hughes, Jewson & Unwin 2007; Ramsten & Säljö 2012). Moreover, in these change efforts, school learning is no longer seen as merely repeating what is already known, but as involving transformations in which something new and formerly unknown is created (e.g. Säljö 2012).
Understanding the dynamic processes of learning situated across space and time, beyond here and now, is challenging traditional definitions of learn-ing and education. How should we conceptualize learning that is able to respond to and explain the increasing complexity, connectivity, and velocity of our times? What transformations are necessary in education in order to bet-ter respond to the learning lives and learning processes that young people experience across different contexts? In this paper, we contend that to under-stand learning in dynamic and extended environments, which address 21st century learning requirements, calls for reconsidering and further developing learning theories and analytical concepts. For example, at present, we have very little understanding of how learners make sense of things and cumulate their understandings as they move from one activity to another, from one set-ting to another, and from one space to another (Lemke 2004). To respond to this call, we introduce the notion of ‘chronotope’ as a conceptual heuristic through which to approach learning as a holistic experience that stretches beyond formal and informal spaces. We enrich our theoretical elaboration of the concept of chronotope via an empirical case study of elementary school students’ technology-mediated creative learning practices. Here, we focus on the social practices of 21 students who worked with personal laptops, wireless Internet access, and a collaborative writing service, in and outside school, to collaborate on creating a school musical script. In specific, we illuminate how space and time are organized in students’ technology-mediated collaborative learning practices.
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chronotope as an analytic tool for understanding learning in extended learning environments
All contexts of learning, classrooms and virtual spaces, are centers of multifac-eted and complex activities: they are places where intensive social, cognitive and cultural mediation occurs as knowledges and subjectivities meet, cross and resist each other (Rex, Steadman & Graciano 2006). Each learning context is nested by multiple worlds occupied by the same people, but in different roles, striving for different purposes simultaneously (Shulman 1986).
It is clear that the complexity of researching learning across space and time calls for a holistic frame and a diversity of approaches with different levels of analysis (Erstad & Sefton-Green 2012). In this paper, we consider the concept of chronotope as a means for examining the ways in which learners socially construct their collective and individual movements through time and space during their social activities (Bloome, Beierle, Grigorenko & Goldman 2009; Brown & Renshaw 2006). Following Lemke (2004), our definition of space and place is one that holdspalaa space becoming a place when, over time, it is at-tached with socially meaningful affordances.
The notion of chronotope can be traced back to the work of Bakhtin (1981) who defines the spatio-temporal matrix as being produced, shaped and re-shaped by the discourses of the participants as they relate to spaces and times beyond here and now. Chronotopes can be seen as typical patterns of organization of and across activities in space and time. Chronotopes are defining the features of a culture or a subculture, such as classrooms, as they inform our design choices in shaping social-institutional spaces for a particular use (Lemke 2004). They are marked by changes in the tempo of an ongoing activity, and thus permit us to explain variation in the pace and the emerging organization of an activity; the situated, dynamic processes evolve through the interaction of past, present, and future (Ligorio & Ritella 2010; Brown & Renshaw 2006).
The notion of chronotope provides researchers with a conceptual lens to in-vestigate learner agency and engagement in social activity within and across formal and informal settings (Bloome et al. 2009; Brown & Renshaw 2006; Kumpulainen, Mikkola & Jaatinen 2013; Lemke 2004). It has been used to illuminate learners’ agency as they collectively explore and negotiate their experiences, understandings and relationships mediated by their past experi-ences, ongoing involvement, future aspirations and goals that are intended to be accomplished (Brown & Renshaw 2006; Kumpulainen & Lipponen 2010).
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In these studies, chronotypes have been defined as spaces in which learners’ agency and identities are negotiated as they move both physically and psycho-logically to different spaces and time scales in their practices and interactions.
a case study of the social construction of space and time in a technology-mediated extended learning environment The empirical study we draw upon in this paper was conducted in a Finnish elementary school of 240 students (grade levels one through six) and 16 teach-ers, in the Helsinki district. What is distinctive about this elementary school is that it has been developing its pedagogical operating culture for a decade by integrating arts and educational technology in the curriculum and pedagogical practices of the school. Educational technology and media are pivotal arti-facts in supporting creative and collaborative learning among members of the school community, which resonates with 21st century learning requirements and supports students’ engagement and agency in learning. As part of their schoolwork, the students and teachers of the elementary school participate in various cross-curricular collaborative projects every year, such as the musi-cal project under study. The collaboratively produced timeline of the school’s ongoing annual activities provides a collective landscape for the school com-munity to follow its plans of action, including mutually agreed upon respon-sibilities and deadlines.
In the fall of 2010, all 240 students participated in a communal musical pro-duction; during a period of one year, they worked together with their teachers, and collaboratively produced a number of poems, short movies, audiovisual effects, animations, stories, and a composition of the musical melody using various technological tools and devices. The outcome of the students’ work, the fantasy school musical “Magic Forest Musical,” was performed on the an-niversary of the school’s founding in May 2011. The musical production is a good example of the creation of a local, school-based curriculum and of an-nual plans collaboratively designed by the school community. It complements and enriches the realization of the national core curriculum that specifies the objectives and core contents of cross-curricular themes, subjects, and subject groups for basic education in Finland (www.oph.fi/english/education/basic_education/curriculum). The national core curriculum leaves room for teachers’ professional expertise in creating and enacting pedagogies for the promotion of students’ learning in accordance with the set goals.
Our empirical study focuses on a three-month phase in the musical project during which 21 fifth- and sixth-grade students (ages 11 to 12) took part in
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writing the school musical script. They were allocated two one-hour sessions every week to write the script at school, where the work was mostly realized in a classroom equipped with audiovisual and Smart Board facilities. To enable the students’ collaborative creation of the script in and outside school, we pro-vided them with small, one-to-one computers (“netbooks”) that were set up with a 24-hour wireless Internet connection and a personalized user account. The laptops were equipped with a collaborative writing tool VisciPad (www.viscipad.hiit.fi), with a chat channel. Furthermore, the students were able to download and use any software or program of their choosing during the writ-ing project. The students worked in 10 small teams of two to three students, with each team writing one part of the script.
data collection and analysisThe data for this study draw on the students’ online chat discussions during the collaborative writing of the musical script and online questionnaire data on the students’ experiences of their learning practices and their use of tech-nological tools and media.
The social construction of the students’ chat interactions and the revision his-tory of the scripts were analyzed at a micro-level to elucidate the space-time configurations of the students’ technology-mediated activities. This included investigating the temporal organization of collaborative activity: how the stu-dents’ work on the musical script was distributed during the hours of the day and per day. The chat data and the revision history of the scripts were automatically saved on a server as a by-product of VisciPad’s normal opera-tion. The service recorded time using millisecond granularity, hence enabling temporal analyses of the data. The students’ online chat interactions were also subjected to interaction analysis ( Jordan & Henderson 1995) in order to examine the content and organization of the students’ socially constructed technology-mediated, creative learning practices.
In order to construct a student perspective on the nature of technology-me-diated learning practices, we administered an online questionnaire to all 21 students in the script group in May 2011, one week after the first performance of the musical. The questionnaire consisted of ten open-ended questions con-cerning the students’ experiences of using laptops and VisciPad for collabora-tive creative writing in and out of school. We asked the students about the purposes, advantages and challenges of using laptops and VisciPad. Also, we asked them about where and when the best ideas for the musical came from, what they did in parallel with writing the script, and what they thought they
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had learnt from working with laptops and Viscipad and making the musical. The students’ questionnaire data were subjected to qualitative content analysis (Chi 1997; Krippendorff 1980). The content analysis began with the careful reading of the students’ responses to each question and then, continued to identifying explicit, dominant themes from the data.
resultsspace-time configurations of students’ technology-mediated creative learning practices
In this section, we characterize the spatio-temporal organization of the stu-dents’ technology-mediated learning practices; that is to say, we illuminate how the students’ collaborative work on the musical script was distributed during the hours of the day and per day. We also describe the nature of the students’ chatting activity with a representative extract (Mitchell 1984).
A total of 8657 messages were sent during the three-month collaborative writ-ing phase of the school musical. The messages were distributed over every hour of the day, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with almost 2400 from the end of the school day at 1 p.m. and after. The data show significant use of VisciPad outside the two weekly one-hour sessions allocated to collaborate on writing the musical script at school. Almost 70% of the students’ script editing events (n=56,578), and 43% of the chat messages (n=8657), fell outside the scheduled lessons that took place on Mondays from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and on Fridays from 11 a.m. to noon. In a similar vein, 14% of all script editing events, and almost 6% of the chat messages were sent during the weekend.
Next, we illuminate the nature of the students’ chat interactions during tech-nology-mediated creative writing of the musical script (see Table 1 below). The example represents typical interactions identified among the students (Mitchell 1984). The chat interaction is characterized by playful and creative use of language in which the students’ formal and informal activities live side-by-side. The students’ socially shared work is not only designated to regular school hours as the students seamlessly continue their engagement in joint writing later in the day, in the evening, and even during the following days. The students’ engagement in creative collaborative activity is stretched across time and space. The timescale of the students’ activity is powerfully demon-strated in the extract that shows the exact timings of the students’ chat interac-tions (see the timing at the end of each turn). Seemingly, the students engage in thoughtful discussions about the nature and progress of their joint endeavor
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March 41: Minna: Mooi (11:46)2: Aino: Hahaa….korjasin yhden
kirjoitusvirheen!!.D (16:18)3: Outi: just jo, no ei se haittaa (20:03)4: Outi: siis joo (20:03)5: Satu: moi löysin tänne joten jätin tekstijäl-
jen:)) (22:11)March 56: Outi: :) (11:37)7: Elli: moi (12:50)March 68: Tanja: tarviin ideoita! (12:14)March 79: Satu: huomenta;) Miten täl kooneella pystyy
tekee sydämmen? (07:43)10: Elli: öööö Emt (09:23)March 1111: Elli: Biisi levyltä (12:19)March 1212: Aino: Moi sannanen ja kaikki muut! Täällä on
pikkasen yksinäistä. haloo!! (12:55)March 1513: Suski: moi sannaaaaaaa....hyvin näyttää
edistyvän=) (19:31)March 1614: Satu: kivalta vaikuttaa (17:01)March 2115: Elli: Dankke (09:18)April 416: Suski: hellou kivalt näyttääää!!! kuka
opettaa noille tyypeille ne kaikki temput??? vai onko ne nyt jo niin taitavii et osaa ne kaikki??????? (19:24)
April 1117: Outi: Enni PIKE! Opettaa niille noi kaikki ja
mä pääsen kans niitten liikkatunnille (09:20)
18: Outi: No moi (12:31)
March 41: Minna: Hiii (11:46)2: Aino: Hahaa….I corrected a spelling mis-
take!!.D (16:18)3: Outi: ye, well that’s okay4: Outi: I mean yes (20:03)5: Satu: hi I found my way here so I left a
footprint:)) (22:11)March 56: Outi: :) (11:37)7: Elli: hi (12:50)March 68: Tanja: I need ideas! (12:14)March 79: Satu: morning;) How can I make a heart with
this computer? (07:43)10: Elli: öööö dunno (09:23)March 1111: Elli: A piece of music from a record (12:19)March 1212: Aino: Hi Sannanen and everyone else! It is a
bit lonely here. haloo!! (12:55)March 1513: Suski: hi sannaaaaa…. it seems that this is
progressing well=) (19:31)March 1614: Satu: looks good (17:01)March 2115: Elli: Thanks (09:18)April 416: Suski: hellou, looks good!!! who teaches all
the tricks to those guys??? or are they now so clever that they already know every-thing??????? (19:24)
April 1117: Outi: Enni PIKE! Teaches them all those things
and I can also join them for their PE lesson. (09:20)
18: Outi: Well hi! (12:31)
Table 1. The nature of the students’ chat activity
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of creating the school musical script; they evaluate their collective work (see turns 2 and 13), give supportive feedback to each other (see turns 14-15), and ask for help and ideas in creating text and in using the technology (see turns 8 and 9). These social interactions are important elements of productive, collaborative work and learning (Dillenbourg 1999; Koschmann 1996). The students’ use of more informal discourses, such as emoticons (e.g. smileys) and discourse markers (e.g. ‘hiii’, ’hahaa’, ‘ööö’, ‘halloo’, ‘hello’) reflects their efforts in the creation of a mutual environment of trust (Vass & Littleton 2010).
In sum, the data show evidence of the students’ deep engagement in their col-laborative writing across space and time. The data demonstrate the emergence of a chronotope in which the students are engaged in ubiquitous, multimodal, and multidimensional, technology-mediated, creative learning practices. These blended learning practices appeared to break away from traditional learning practices, allowing learners to navigate in different time zones, spaces, and places with diverse tools situated in their formal and informal lives creating a supportive ground for the students’ collaborative work.
students’ perspectives on their technology-mediated creative learning practices
Next, we will discuss the results of the online questionnaire illuminating the students’ accounts of their technology-mediated creative learning practices. According to the students surveyed, they considered the possibility of interact-ing with friends through chat the most advantageous feature offered by the use of laptops and VisciPad during the collaborative creative writing process. The collaborative writing tool gave the students opportunities to suggest, in-vent, and propose ideas for collective reflection, encouraging them to analyze and to explore the past, present, and future of their creative processes as demonstrated by this student response: “I think VisciPad was useful since I could chat with my work partner at the same time. You could also see what each one of us had written. It was great to have laptops at home since you could immediately write down your good idea when it came to mind.” Many students also mentioned having appreciated the possibility of working flexibly in and outside school settings.
When asked about the purposes for which the students used their personal laptops and VisciPad outside the classroom, they reported having used them for a range of purposes, not the least of which was using them for writing the school musical itself. “YouTubing” was the most frequent activity reported by the students in our study in addition to playing games, “Facebooking,” listening
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to music and chatting. Moreover, reading for school exams and talking with friends in online discussion forums were included, among others, in the stu-dents’ responses. In parallel with writing the musical, the students reported having used the laptops in a variety of ways. Common uses included listening to music, “Facebooking,” watching YouTube, chatting, playing games, brows-ing and searching for information on the Internet, and reading e-mail.
When asked about the conditions and settings in which the students felt they were at their most creative, the majority of the students interestingly reported getting the best ideas for their musical script at home and at school. Some students mentioned the social and collaborative nature of creative work, and others emphasized getting the best ideas for their script when they were alone: when it was quiet, or when they were doing “something else” other than writ-ing the musical script. Apparently, the construction of creative ideas is fostered in learning settings in which students are given enough time, flexibility, and space to work with their ideas. The following extract further illuminates the collaborative nature of the students’ creative activity: “Some ideas I got after school at my friend’s house. And then, I shared them at school the next day. Also, some ideas came after someone else got an idea.”
discussionIn traditional schooling, space and time are usually strictly controlled and circumscribed (Brown & Renshaw 2006; Leander 2002; Vadeboncouer 2005). Inflexible curricula, textbooks, and teacher talk dictate, to a large degree, the dominant chronotope of schooling, leaving little room for personalized and creative learning practices (Engeström 2008; Facer 2011; Leander 2002; Mehan 1979; Säljö 2012). Moreover, today, many schools are equipped with digital technologies, but the question remains how these technologies are integrated into the curriculum, and how they are used to promote meaningful learning that equips learners for life and work in the 21st century (Collins & Halverson 2009; Jonassen, Howland, Marra & Crismond 2008; Kemker, Barron & Hermes 2007; Lim & Chai 2008). In fact, organizationally, schools often minimize the opportunity for long-term intellectual and identity development by discon-necting the study of each subject from all the others, and by dividing the day into periods defined by a clock rather than by the needs of learning (Lemke 2002). In this paper, we have argued that if we want to educate learners to be prepared for life and work in the 21st century, we need to create new forms of educational space-time configurations that resonate with students’ learning lives in and outside school.
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In this paper, we have illuminated the space-time configurations of elemen-tary school students’ technology-mediated, creative learning practices over the course of a school musical project in a Finnish elementary school community where curriculum and pedagogical culture stress the learning requirements of our times. The findings of our study provide evidence of the emergence of a novel chronotope in which the students engaged in ubiquitous, multimodal, and multidimensional, technology-mediated, creative learning practices that broke away from traditional school-based practices. The students’ activities involved periods of intensive writing, reading, drafting and reviewing, chat-ting and exchanging e-mails, searching for information, taking a break, and listening to music, in addition to solo and collaborative working. In all, the students’ collaborative writing activity seemed to be fluid, and layered within the context of heterogeneous networks of activities linked to their formal and informal lives and to their use of artifacts. Thus, one could describe the identi-fied chronotope of technology-mediated creative learning as involving prac-tices that hybridize and inter-mix modalities and media (Hakkarainen 2009). Moreover, the findings illustrate the poly- and inter-contextual nature of the students’ technology-mediated, creative learning practices. Here, poly-contex-tuality means engagement in multiple ongoing tasks (Engeström, Engeström & Kärkkäinen 1995; Reder 1993), whereas inter-contextuality refers to a space in which two or more contexts link with one another (Gee & Green 1998; Le-ander 2002). In sum, the chronotopes of students’ technology-mediated crea-tive learning practices are locally improvised in conjunction with mediation from the socio-historically developed genre, technology-based instruments, and educational practices (Prior 2005). Thus, the chronotopes identified in this study are developmental achievements that emerged through sustained collec-tive efforts within the entire school community (Ritella & Hakkarainen 2012).
It is important to acknowledge that technology-mediated, creative learning practices that extend across space and time and that recognize students’ learn-ing lives were fostered by the pedagogical culture of the school. Without a pedagogical culture that extends students’ creative collaborative learning prac-tices by stressing the importance of learners engaging in pursuing meaningful activities with relevant resources and tools, valuing learner agency, authority and accountability, breaking boundaries (Engle & Conant 2002), technology is initially likely to represent a mere additional layer of activity used within the traditional chronotope of schooling (Hakkarainen 2009). Whilst creating innovative learning environments or learning communities, it is thus not just a matter of implementing and putting into use new technology, but in many cases, it is also a matter of transforming simultaneously existing social prac-tices of learning and instruction. Co-evolution of the social and technological
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infrastructures of schools should be the starting point for thinking about im-plementing technology and new forms of extended learning activities (Lip-ponen 2002).
Conventional pedagogies and learning environments, which produce restrict-ed educational space-time configurations, rarely resonate with students’ whole learning lives. Yet, the complexity of contemporary society calls for new kinds of chronotopes to serve the multiplicity of needs of all 21st century learners. Designing learning environments that respond to students’ whole learning lives and that reconfigure spaces and places of learning is important in today’s education where an increasing number of students feel disengaged and dis-connected from formal education (e.g. Brown 1994; Brown & Renshaw 2006; Rajala, Hilppö, Lipponen & Kumpulainen 2013; Walker & Nocon 2007; Wells 1999).
To build schools that encompass extended learning environments requires the wisdom, collaborative creativity, and passion of teachers and school lead-ers committed to putting their visions of education futures into action. These transformation efforts also require the support of educational policy frame-works – including flexibility in the implementation of the curriculum – that let such innovations flourish (Facer 2011). A chronotopic analysis appears as a fruitful analytic tool for developing a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which novel space-time configurations are constructed in and for 21st century learning.
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Harri Ketamo
Games as learning environmentsWhy should teachers and parents be interested?
introduction
Our education system is not broken, but it is becoming obsolete. We’re still running an educational model developed for the industrial revo-lution, designed to prepare workers for factory jobs. (Kembel, 2010.)
The western school system is said to be in crisis. Running a school is very expensive, dropout rates are far too high, and the total school hours are re-markably small. The only medicine is said to be smaller group sizes with more teachers, but that increases costs. At the same time, there are hundreds of mil-lions of children who just have to accept huge group sizes and non-qualified teachers to get even some education, the quality and scale are missing.
At the same time, Learning Management Systems (LMS) have not provided what learners and educators have expected. The LMSs are neither motivating environments for learners, nor beneficial for educators. So called Learning Analytics are still in their very early stages, and reports like “learner xyz has done 97 exercises from which 86% correctly” only tell an educator that learner xyz has just done 86% of the exercises – the quality and scale are missing.
On a global scale, decreasing group sizes and hiring more teachers is not a solution, we have to focus on learning and teaching processes. Furthermore, by applying technology in a pedagogically meaningful way, we can balance the quality and scale in education. The possibilities for new technological solutions focus on two main themes: 1) the need for changes in the learning environment and 2) the need for change in the learning process.
The changes in the learning environment highlight the need to scale up the volume of e-learning. The global leaders in digital learning content produc-tion have defined the future classroom consisting of 1) Cloud Computing, 2) Learning Analytics, 3) Game-Based Learning, 4) Personalized Learning Envi-ronments, 5) Open Content and 6) Mobile Learning. Because this list certainly has a marketing message, we should not take this as the whole truth. However, it certainly will show the driving forces of future classroom technologies.
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The traditional learning process highlights homework after school hours (Fig-ure 1). The same goes for self-studying. Modern educational research has shown that this is not the optimal way to maintain natural motivation. The change in the classroom process is called Flipped Classroom, Reversed class-room or simply The Flip. The idea in the Flip is that homework is done before school and school hours are used for team work and sharing knowledge. At the moment, Flip is maybe the fastest growing trend in K-12 educational re-form. However, currently there are only a few solutions to support flip – it is mainly done by teachers.
However, we have to keep in mind that the mental learning process will not change, no matter what the technological and pedagogical environment is. In terms of cognitive psychology of learning, people actively construct their own knowledge through interaction with the environment and through reor-ganization of their mental structures. The key elements in learning are accom-modation and assimilation. Accommodation describes an event when learners discover something radically new, which leads to a change in their mental conceptual structure. Assimilation describes events when learners strengthen their mental conceptual structure by means of new relations.
Games are expected to take education to the next level. This, however, is an illusion. Games, without an understanding of the dynamics of learning, only create illusions of powerful and motivated learning. As recognized in literature review, the positive relationship between cognitive and motivational themes in mathematics learning has been acknowledged, but there is no absolute proof that increased motivation automatically increases the learning outcome (e.g. Lapointe & al. 2005; Mason & al. 2004). Furthermore, by playing games a pupil will certainly learn something, but can we know what?
Figure 1. Traditional classroom and self-studying process.
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research frameworkIn this paper, several original studies, with the aim to develop semantic net-works-based models, of recording learning processes in games and gamified environments are summarized. These semantic models are used in computa-tional background in different media products, namely Animal Class, Mathe-matics Navigator, Learning Fingerprint and Math Elements. The media products are developed as commercial products and they are funded and published by private companies. The products have served as test beds for the semantic computing research enabling collecting Big Datatype of samples with tens of thousands of users.
The semantic network models approach learning from two basic perspectives: Inductive learning and deductive learning. The idea in Inductive learning theo-ries is that we build our understanding by connecting single concepts to form a large conceptual understanding that is unique for everyone. Deductive learn-ing theories highlight the reproduction of individual conceptual understanding based on some common conceptual understanding. In the real world, neither one of these exists without the other, but as a theory, they provide a solid background for computational and semantic modeling.
Because the educational research and all analysis discussed in this paper are strongly based on these Inductive learning and Deductive learning semantic models (frameworks), in the following the approaches are described in detail.
The Inductive learning framework is based on the author’s previous work: research articles have been published from the point of view of cognitive sci-ence (e.g. Ketamo & Suominen 2010; Ketamo & Kiili 2010; Ketamo, Kiili, Arnab & Dunwell 2013) and from a technological point of view (e.g. Ketamo 2009; Ketamo 2011; Ketamo 2013a). The AI behind framework emulates the human way to learn. The easiest way to illustrate this is through an example:
At first, the player teaches the relation between 1 and 1/2. The question, cre-ated by the player is: “Is ½ smaller than 1?” The agent does not have previous knowledge, so it will guess. In case it guesses “true”, the player’s evaluation is “Correct.” The relation “½ is smaller than 1.” is formed in the conceptual structure (Figure 2a). The same would occur in a case where the agent guesses “False” and the player evaluates “Wrong”.
A teaching phase consists of a question creation and evaluationpair. Each teaching phase adds new relations to the conceptual structure. Furthermore, if the concept is not taught before, the new concept is also added to the
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conceptual structure during the teaching phase. The following example briefly describes the development of conceptual structures in the agent’s mind during teaching phases. An understanding of how an agent’s conceptual structure de-velops during playing is important in order to be able to interpret the results of the study. Each teaching phase is recorded in a semantic (conceptual) network within the game AI with one or more ‘is (not/option) related to’, ‘is (not) big-ger’, ‘is (not) equal’, etc. relations. The following example is based on is (not) bigger and is (not) equal relations. In the second teaching phase, the player teaches a relation between 0.3 and ½, with the question “Is 0.3 bigger than ½?” The player knows that the question is false, but the agent answers (guesses) “True”. So the player evaluates “wrong” and the agent determines that the cor-rect answer is either “0.3 is equal to ½” or “0.3 is smaller than ½”. The concep-tual network in the agent’s mind grows by both of these relations (Figure 2b).
In the third teaching phase, a player forms a question in another way and asks “is 0.3 equal to ½?”. Again, we know the statement is false. The agent can guess that the statement is either “true” according to an “is_equal_to” relation or “false” according to a “is_smaller_than” relation. The agent guesses “false”. When the player evaluates the answer as “correct”, the agent determines that the correct answer must be either “0.3 is smaller than ½” or “0.3 is greater than ½”. After adding relations to the conceptual structure, the agent knows that the correct answer is “0.3 is smaller than ½” because it is the mode (average) relation (Figure 2c).
In the fourth teaching phase, the player asks, “Is 70% smaller than ½?” and on purpose, s/he teaches it the wrong way. The agent guesses that the statement is “true” and the player evaluates the answer as “Correct”, which forms an “is_smaller_than” relation in the conceptual structure (Figure 2d).
In the fifth teaching phase, the player starts to correct the conceptual structure. S/He asks again,“ Is 70% smaller than ½?”. According to previous teaching, the agent knows that the answer is “true”. Because the player now knows that it is the incorrect answer, the player evaluates it as “incorrect”. In this case the agent determines, that 70% must be equal to ½ or 70% must be greater than ½. After adding relations, the conceptual structure has all the possible comparing statements (Figure 2e) and basically behaves like an empty structure.
In the sixth teaching phase, the player asks for the third time, “Is 70% smaller than ½?”. Because there is no strongest relation, the agent guesses “true”. The player evaluates it again as “incorrect”. Again, the agent determines, that 70%
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Figure 2. Semantic network and its development during the teaching phases.
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must be equal to ½ or 70% must be greater than ½ and adds those relations to the conceptual structure (Figure 2f).
In the seventh teaching phase, the player decides to change the question to “Is 70% more than ½?”. The agent guesses “True”, because ‘is_equal’ and ‘is_great-er_than’ contain the same probability. The player confirms that the answer was correct and one more “is_greater_than” relation was added to the conceptual structure (Figure 2g). After that, the agent knows that the correct answer is “70% is greater than ½”, because such a set of relations are the strongest.
While playing, the conceptual structure will grow to thousands of relations and a single teaching phase only has a limited effect on the areas of the con-ceptual structure already taught. Understanding this phenomenon is valuable when trying to correct a wrongly taught part of the conceptual structure. Naturally, wrong teaching could be corrected by teaching the correct structure enough times. The game AI uses all the taught information to back its deci-sions, and therefore it takes time to override the wrong relations in the agent’s conceptual structure.
The Deductive learning framework extends the idea of learning objects and learning object meta data, like SCORM, IMS and LOM (ADL, IMS Global, IEEE ). In this extended approach, the content object is a unit containing the smallest possible piece of content that can be used independently without the support of any external content (Ketamo 2009a, Ketamo 2009b, Ketamo 2011). Naturally, all meaningful learning contents are based on content objects that strongly support one another. The content objects are described by: 1) detailed rank ordered keywords (tags, concepts) that define the themes that the con-tent is about and 2) a difficulty estimator that describes the estimated differ-ences in difficulty expectations between tags. The difficulty level is not meant to be strict and general throughout the whole network. It must be accepted that there is a relatively high uncertainty about estimated difficulty contained. However, the semantic network at a conceptual level is very strict and this difficulty in estimation is meant to strengthen this part of the network. In the following text, the keywords concept and tag (used in the terminology of the semantic web) are used synonymously.
The semantic network is computationally built according to tags defined in content objects. Each content object (Figure 3) has several tags which form the first layer of the network. When two tags are used as one content object, they are considered to be related one time in practice. The more relations there are between the tags that are observed, the more related the tags are in the
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semantic network (Figure 4). These networks contain a detailed knowledge representation of the content at a conceptual level. According to this concep-tual knowledge representation, the relationship between content objects can be mined easily. In other words, the semantic network offers the possibility of easily managing relations between content objects. This kind of structure of-fers numerous possible paths through the material.
The semantic network is built computationally according to predefined in-formation, because of resources. Educational content, based on thousands of content objects, includes hundreds of thousands of relationships between the objects. If naming a relationship takes the development person approximately one minute, forming a network of this size requires more than a year. How-ever, naming the tags and difficulties takes a few minutes per content object, which means that several thousand objects are described in a week. Building a network takes several hours with current algorithms, but when it is built, all the manipulations and searches needed for self-organization can be processed in milliseconds.
Figure 3. Content objects (bottom) and their keywords (tags) form an inductive, from pieces to context, type of network (Layer 1).
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In Figure 5, the relationship between content objects within one Navigator-based course are visualized. The relationships are based on the method de-scribed in Figures 3 and 4. The visualization shows the strongest dependencies between content objects. The closer the objects are in visualization, the closer they are, as a cluster, to each other. The clusters can be easily seen as being the darker areas of the visualization.
Content management is based on this kind of complex semantic network, but self-organization requires more detailed individual modeling. Individual modeling is performed by allowing the system to make individual records in the semantic network. Naturally, this increases the model as a data set, but in practice this does not increase the complexity of the modeling: The individual records are stored as node properties.
One of the key elements of this modeling is the self-organization of the con-tent. Progression within a course is defined by ordering some concepts from the semantic network (Figures 6-8) with an ‘is before’ relation. The course starts from the beginning of this ordered set of tags.
Figure 4. The semantic network, built according to tags, forms a knowledge representation (Layer 2) that can be used, for example, to define the most proximate concepts.
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Figure 5. Visualized relationships within one learning material
Figure 6. The course starts from the first concept, defined by ‘is before’ relations. The content object is selected according to Layer 1 of the network.
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When a user has correctly passed a content object, fuzzy estimators of com-petences observed for each concept are recalculated as a geometric series, in which the newest item weighs 0.5 (Figure 6) and the tail weighs 0.5. In prac-tice, this weight parameter for the newest item is one way to have control over the behavior of the system. Its value varies between 0.1 and 0.3 depending on the size of the network and the type of course.
After observed competence exceeds a certain limit, the system searches for the strongest path to the next fixed concept of the course (Figure 7 and Fig-ure 8). All concepts that belong to the path and their neighborhood should be passed before going on further. This path from the next fixed concept can change during progress, if the system finds a more optimal path according to estimated competencies.
Figure 7. The user has passed a second content object and the competence values have been recalculated. The user now reaches the second fixed concept of the network.
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Figure 8. The user has passed the second fixed concept and the competency values have been recalculated.
In the example, progress was made by correct answers in a simplified environ-ment. In practice, the selection of the content objects, as well as the reorgani-zation of the path between fixed points, produce the sometimes semi-chaotic behavior remaining. This happens even though the system is deterministic and the future dynamics are fully defined by the conditions of the semantic network and competency records.
adaptation to individual learning needsMathematics Navigator (MathNavi) and Artificial Fingerprint (AF) are gamified mathematics learning materials meant for self studying or blended learning activities. Adaptation of content is based on a Deductive learning framework, presented in the previous chapter. The content – theory, examples and exer-cises – of MathNavi and AF are based on the idea of content objects. A content object is a unit containing the smallest possible piece of content that can be
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used independently without the support of other content objects. Naturally, courses are based on content objects that strongly support one another. The content objects are described by: 1) detailed rank ordered keywords that de-fine the structure of content and 2) single relations between objects in pre-ferred order. This structure offers a possibility to organize numerous paths through the material.
A learner’s performance could be estimated even in large complex domains with very detailed and extensible user models, combined with a learnable sys-tem. Of course, this kind of modeling takes some time: the system must learn the performance level of the user. Empirically formed decision trees were used when the system had not yet constructed detailed enough profiles about the learners in order to dynamically adapt the content and exercises to their learn-ing needs. This kind of use of empirically found rules, which can be applied to support a user’s experience, was found to be valuable during earlier research (Ketamo, Alajääski & Kiili 2009; Hiltunen, Ketamo & Sankila 2006).
Figure 9. User interface of MathNavi and a basic mathematics course (in Finnish).
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The user interface of MathNavi is based on a menu-bar and three main areas (Figure 9). On the left side of the interface, there is a table of contents and a content-related competence profile of the user. The table of contents presents two different views of the content: 1) a traditional book-like table of contents and 2) an exercise adapted table of contents. The exercises are presented one at a time in the right-bottom corner of the interface. The user cannot proceed to a new exercise until the current one is answered by picking an answer from a total of 4 alternative answers. The exercises are selected to support an indi-vidual user’s learning needs. There are no fixed paths for learning: everything is based on the student’s competence profile and estimated need for practice and content. Guiding factors in exercise selection are: 1) course structure (a traditional table of contents) and 2) the measured and estimated learning abili-ties and areas of weaknesses.
The course is completed during three iterative rounds. The first round is aimed at: 1) familiarizing the student with the course and MathNavi and 2) supplying MathNavi with enough data of the user’s mathematical skills to begin optimiz-ing the content with respect to the user. After the first round, the competence profile (Figure 1, left) shows strengths and weaknesses. The first round in the basic mathematics course takes approximately 3-6 hours (approximately 50 exercises). From this point on, MathNavi uses the competence profile cu-mulatively to adapt the content to meet the user’s learning needs. During the second round, MathNavi ensures that the student acquires reasonably meas-ured skills in all of the required topics. The second round takes about 10-15 hours (approximately 100-150 exercises) After the second round, the estimated skills compared to expected skills should exceed 90%. After this, the user can continue the course (third round), but it is not required. Results from earlier studies (e.g. Ketamo & Alajääski 2008; Kiili & Katmo 2005) show that if the es-timated outcome exceeds 90%, the user has mastered the subject with reason-able skills and statistically has a very high probability of mastering the subject.
The average improvement of t-test scores from the pre- to the post-test in the experimental student group (n = 68) was 5.2 points on a scale 0-66 (approx. 8%), which is statistically a very significant improvement (t = -4.000, df = 67, p = 0.000). The pretest and post-test scores, expectedly, show a statistically significant degree of correlation (r = 0.765, p = 0.000). The pretest scores and improvement scores show a low degree of negative correlation (r = -0.265, p = 0,029). The correlation analysis between the post-test scores and the improve-ment scores reveals a moderate degree of positive correlation (r = 0.419, p = 0,000) and the scores of many students show a shift from the average scoring category to the high scoring category and from the low scoring category to the average scoring category.
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However, the high scoring group’s relative gain was not as great as that in the average scoring group, which was not surprising. Firstly, the test instrument was meant to measure mathematic basic skills, and when a person has good skills at the beginning, there is much less to gain compared to a person with slightly lower skills at the beginning. Secondly, MathNavi does not teach, it is a tutor that guides the learning process. Low skilled students are a challenge for such systems, because the main reason for low skills might be a consequence of several causes and just revising basics, even in meaningful order, is not enough for them.
MathNavi is meant to produce individual learning paths, which was studied with a pattern analysis and data mining methods. The generalized sequenced / pattern centered variables for the analysis were: 1) an average count of cor-rectly answered exercises. 2) an average count of incorrectly answered exer-cises. 3) the relative number of correctly answered exercises. 4) the average time in seconds used per exercise. 5) the number of times when new content (theory) was opened for browsing.
The pretest score and the relative frequency of correct answers in the first quarter showed a moderate degree of positive correlation (r = 0.424, p = 0.000), and the relative frequency of correct answers in the last quarter and the post-test score showed a low degree of positive correlation (r = 0.294, p = 0.014). This is not surprising; it merely indicates that the tests and Math-Navi operate within relatively similar mathematical contexts and measure quite similar mathematical competencies. This is also parallel to the results which show a positive correlation between the high relative frequency of correct answers in MathNavi work and the high empirical probability of passing the final examination.
The relative frequency of correct answers in the first and fourth quarter showed a moderate degree of positive correlation (r = 0.506, p = 0.000). This is an ex-pected result and it is in accordance with the respective moderate degree of positive correlation (r = 0,512; p = 0,000) between the pretest and post-test scores. The difference between the relative frequencies of correct answers in the first and last quarters was statistically very significant (t = -6.355, df = 67, p = 0.000).
The MathNavi working process offered no surprises; it mirrors the results of the learning outcomes. In order to discover more details, a correlation network (Figure 2) was defined using time ordered quartiles and certain generalized ac-tions describing variables. All presented correlations are statistically significant.
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Only correlations, which could theoretically be interpreted as being causal by nature, are shown. Out layer correlations without theoretical interpretation of causality, e.g. between content reading in the first quarter and avg. time used in the last quarter, are omitted. Three interesting exceptional correlations with-out statistical significance are shown by dotted lines.
Generalized actions describing variables are presented as row variables and timeline quarters as column variables. Progress between checkpoints in each row are all strictly monotonic, and the difference between the first checkpoint and the last checkpoint is statistically significant in every case (rows): The av-erage number of correctly answered exercises (t = 2.778, df = 67, p = 0.007), the average number of incorrectly answered exercises (t =6.773, df = 67, p = 0.000), the average time in seconds used per exercise (t = -5.202, df = 67, p = 0.000), and 5) the number of times when new content was opened (t = -5.233, df = 67, p = 0.000).
However, there are also very significant correlations statistically between each step in each row (see Figure 10), which means that, in general, the high scor-ers (in the pretest) remain in their category and the low scorers remain in theirs. The scoring improvements seen in all variables are the consequences of improvement of the whole experimental group – not only an improvement of some subgroup. Because of strictly monotonic development in the variables
Figure 10. A correlation network of the learning process with MathNavi
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and statistically very significant correlations between checkpoints, we can see at a more detailed level that MathNavi guides the whole experimental group in the right direction - as the results of the pre- and post-test outcomes indicate.
The correlation network is used to describe the phenomenon that causes strictly monotonic development. When focusing on the first quarter, we have to remember that it takes approximately 30-60 exercises before MathNavi can estimate the weaknesses and strengths of a student. In the first quarter, there are two important factors: Firstly, the students with lower pretest scores had significantly more incorrect answers, which reflects negatively on the relative correctness. On the other hand, the students with higher pretest scores or with higher motivation towards learning have read more theory and used more time for their work. This reflected positively on the relative correctness.
Because of monotonic development of the variables, the factors were fore-seen when moving into the second path quarter: Those with a low relative correctness rate were given more exercises and they also gave more incorrect answers than those with a better relative correctness rate. Nevertheless, during the second path quarter, the lower scorers received guidance from the Math-Navi and could improve their relative correctness rate significantly. Those with a better relative correctness rate in the first path quarter kept their style and used even more time to read more pieces of theory and therefore they also gained from the work - despite the smaller number of exercises.
During the third path quarter, the learning styles of some pretest lower scorers changed: they began to spend more time on thinking over the exercises, but they did not use MathNavi’s learning content in a similar way to the pretest higher scorers. The changes caused weakened correlations (Figure 2, dotted lines) between the relative correctness rate of answers and the average num-ber of correctly answered exercises, as well as between the average time in seconds used per exercise and the number of times when new content was browsed for reading on the screen.
The fourth quarter is similar to the previous one: the students with a lower relative rate of correct answers were supplied with more exercises, they used more time on calculations and they gained from their work. Students with a higher relative rate of correct answers were supplied with fewer exercises, but the supplied exercises also supported their development relevantly.
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implementing and applying learning analytics Games and other virtual environments can provide relevant and meaning-ful information for individual learners, their parents, teachers and finally for the educational system at a national level. In the following, we focus on 1) in-game analytics for players, parents and teachers in a Math Elements math-ematics game and 2) an analytics tool for national curriculum development with data received from Math Elements and AnimalClaas mathematics games. The tools and methods have been published in the author’s previous studies (Ketamo & Kiili 2010b, Ketamo 2010, Ketamo 2013b)
The in-game analytics tool in Math Elements (Figure 11) is meant for parents or teachers to quickly observe what learners have taught their pets. In Figure 11, correctly taught concepts are shown in the upper part of the skills area and wrongly taught concepts in the lower part of the area. The quantity of teaching is shown in Figure 11 withconcepts that are taught a lot on the right side of the area and little taught concepts on the left side. The quantity of teaching also means that the more relations a concept has, the more correctly it is located. Concepts that have not been taught do not appear in the skills area.
Figure 11. In-game analytics tool
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When focusing on dependencies between the teaching of a conceptual struc-ture and pupils’ achievements measured with traditional paper tests, we can find out that the taught conceptual structure is strongly related to paper tests scores received after game play (0.4<r<0.7) with all tested content on math-ematics and natural sciences. This is an important result in terms of reliability of the game as an assessment/evaluation instrument.
In the game, the content at one level represents approximately one school week in a Finnish school. The player can receive one to three stars when com-pleting the level. The bronze prize represents satisfactory skills and the golden prize stars represent good skills. However, the results of playing the game are always a bit fuzzy: the player can just have good luck and receive the golden prize with a silver prize performance. Furthermore, once in a while a nearly perfectly taught game character can have non-optimal performance because of one difficult task. So the evaluation/assessment with Math Elements at a single level is only indicative, but completing a whole grade requires skills that would be required to pass the same grade in a Finnish school.
When going in more detail, wrong answers or misconceptions are not the only relevant factor explaining the learning outcome. According to data received from playing the game, avoiding number (or concept) directly indicates poor performance in such a concept. In Figure 12, some of the numbers and fre-quencies avoiding the numbers when playing the game are presented. In fact, we can see that once again the most avoided numbers are the odd nominated fractions .
Figure 12. Frequencies on correct answers, wrong answers and avoiding the number: bottom = correct, middle/low = incorrect, middle/high = avoided, top = unclear answers Unclear means that in some cases the players have understood such a number correctly while in other cases they have not.
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From the point of view of data mining, we could point out two interesting phe-nomena: 1) the discovery of the origin of the difficulties in learning fractions, decimals and percentages and 2) the relation between transfer in learning and transfer in avoiding learning.
The difficulties in fractions are mediated by unequal nominators (Figure 13). In Figure 13, on the left side, the relations between difficulties with certain numbers are visualized as a map. The arch (edge) value describes the prob-ability for a case when a person has difficulties with both connected numbers. The analysis of the map shows that there are always unequal nominators caus-ing the high probability for related misunderstanding.
Furthermore, when we extend the range of numbers by fractions with odd nominators (Figure 13 right), we can see that in most cases the difficulties are mediated by an odd and even nominator. The result is interesting, because we can find different levels of related difficulties: The odd nominators are dif-ficult to compare with even nominators, but the same occurs with only even nominators.
Figure 13. Partial probability map for related difficulties in mathematics. Left: with even nominators. Right: with odd and even nominators.
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Figure 14. Partial probability map for connected difficulties with percentages, decimals and fractions The difficulties and misconceptions are strongly related. When a person has learned a concept, the knowledge will transfer (in terms of near transfer) from one game to another. In our experiment, the knowledge trans-fers from one game to another at a significant level (r=0.2 – 0.5). The strength of the correlation depends on a concept and its neighborhood. For example, number 0.5 is in general easier than 7/17. This causes that the correlation for learning transfer is higher in the neighborhood of 0.5 than in the neighborhood of 7/17. Without the high count of difficult fractions in the most difficult game, the correlations concerning learning transfer would have been remarkably higher.
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The nature of this difficulty type might cause cumulative difficulties with func-tions and series with variable as nominator: If a person cannot recognize the growth of the numbers as numbers, how can we expect that he/she can un-derstand the growth as a function.
Even more interesting is that difficulties in combining percentages, decimals and fractions are strongly mediated by fractions. However, the strongest dif-ficulties are mediated by different types of numbers, but fractions do have the strongest role. Furthermore, the fractions with odd nominators (3,5,…) control the map of connected difficulties (Figure 14).
However, avoiding behavior is even more clearly transferred from one game to another than learning outcomes: If a person was avoiding some number in the first game, he/she tends to avoid it in the following game (r=0.3 – 0.7). The result indicates that learning games in general can provide a frame-work to transfer knowledge in a meaningful way. The results and implications should be notified when designing educational games – also misconceptions and avoiding behavior will transfer. If an educational game provides incorrect knowledge or it makes a pupil to avoid some theme, the consequences can be very negative in terms of learning.
Analytics for a national curriculum development: When summarizing the in-dividual game achievements, schools and national level policy makers can receive an analysis of competences and skills at a general level. They can ap-ply this information in order to develop their teaching instructions or formal curriculum. Our goal is not to rank countries, what we do is to provide infor-
Figure 15. World scale analytics
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mation for developing the practice. The full analytics shows all the countries on which we have data to analyze (Figure 15). Countries participating in PISA are colored with scale green to red, showing their rank in PISA. Blue colored countries are not in PISA, but we can also provide analytics for those countries.
future signalsWhen coming back to ideas of Flipped Classroom as a paradigm shift, most of the Flip models are based on video content and most implementations are for secondary and higher education. In fact, games based on Flipped classroom applications for the elementary school have not been implemented and ex-perimented before. An important part of our experimental Flipped classroom process is in the progress in skills and knowledge (Figure 16). The level of knowledge is increased via Flip cycles that are partially overlapping. Naturally, the time the progress takes is individual and that is what Flip is meant for – individual learning experiences.
In our experiment, the progress (level of knowledge) is controlled by the game. It is always good to become familiar with the future content, but a learner cannot access the next level until the required knowledge has been earned. The arts and crafts material enables learnerswith different progress to share their knowledge and creative ideas with others, which is the optimal way to deepen the social learning experience.
The experiments were started when writing this paper, and will be reported during year 2014.
Figure 16. Math Elements flipped classroom process
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conclusionsGames and gamification are the new form of storytelling and social interac-tion for the younger generation. Furthermore, learning has always been about storytelling and social interaction. Given that children and young adults are ready to do more work for their game characters than what they are ready to do for themselves, we should be very interested in developing methods to take full advantage of this for educational purposes.
According to our studies, users can relatively quickly and easily teach behavior to a game character. In terms of conceptual learning, the developed AI emu-lates the way people learn: learning is about concepts and their relations. The semantic modeling makes it possible to model a learning process and thus un-cover the frequencies, dependencies and patterns behind conceptual learning and learning transfer. The most important finding on this is the role of avoiding behavior. If pupils assume that they are not aware of some theme, they would not even try to override their difficulties. Accordingly, they continue to believe illusions of understanding without any effort to override these. This makes conceptual change, as well as learning in general, impossible.
Finally, designing adaptive learning technologies based on detailed learning analytics, we can build solutions and products that can reveal the blind spots of learning. This can be achieved, even with today’s technology, without a teacher. In other words, we are overcoming the challenge between scale and quality in education: A Qualified teacher can apply technologies in order to understand pupils and students’ individual learning needs in real time. Fur-thermore, combined with Flip, this enables a real paradigm shift in a teacher’s work. Non-qualified teachers can apply technologies to guide their work. No longer do they have to be ashamed of qualification, when they can focus on encouraging and supporting learners while technologies can guide and tutor the learning process.
referencesHiltunen, H., Ketamo, H. & Sankila, T. 2006. Navigator – Self-directed learning material for mathematics. In proceeding of Online Educa Berlin 2006, 29.11. – 1.12.2006.
Kembel, G. 2010. The classroom in 2020. The Forbes 04.08.10.
Ketamo, H. 2009. Self-organizing content management with semantic neural networks. In Recent Advances in Neural Networks: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS International Conference on Neural Networks (NN’09), Prague, Czech Republic, 23.–25.3. 2009, 63–69.
Ketamo, H. 2009. Self-organizing educational content: Framework, implementation and empirical evaluation. In Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference on Information Systems 2009, 25.–27.2.2009, Barcelona, Spain, 89–96.
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Ketamo, H. 2009. Semantic networks -based teachable agents in an educational game. Transactions on Computers, 8(4), 641–650.
Ketamo, H. 2010. Educational data mining: Tools to support learning 3.0. In Proceedings of Online Educa Berlin 2010, 1.–3. December, Berlin, Germany.
Ketamo, H. 2011. Sharing behaviors in games and social media. International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Informatics, 5(1), 224–232.
Ketamo, H. 2011. Managing information overload - Teachable media agents. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management & Organisational Learning – ICICKM 2011. 27.–28 October 2011, Bangkok, Thailand, 301–308.
Ketamo, H. 2013a. Sharing behaviors in educational games: A framework for Eedu ele-ments mathematics game. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 3(2), 156–161.
Ketamo, H. (2013b). Agents and analytics. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, vol2 (ICAART 2013), 15.–18. February 2013, Barce-lona, Spain, 377–383.
Ketamo, H., Alajääski, J. & Kiili, K. 2009. Self-organizing learning material on teacher education. In Proceedings of EdMedia 2009, 22.–26.6.2009, Honolulu, Hawaii, 3658–3667.
Ketamo, H. & Kiili, K. 2010a. Conceptual change takes time: Game based learning cannot be only supplementary amusement. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 19(4), 399–419
Ketamo, H. & Kiili, K. 2010b. Mining educational game data: Uncovering complex mecha-nisms behind learning. In proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Games Based Learning. 21.–22. October 2010, Copenhagen, Denmark, 151–159.
Ketamo, H. & Suominen, M. 2010. Learning-by-teaching in an educational game: The educational outcome, user experience and social networks. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 21(1), 75–94.
Ketamo, H., Kiili, K., Arnab, S. & Dunwell, I. 2013. Integrating games into the classroom: Towards new teachership. In Freitas, Ott, Popescu & Stanescu (Eds.) New Pedagogical Approaches in Game Enhanced Learning: Curriculum Integration. IGI Global: Hershey, PA, 114–135.
Lapointe, J., Legault, F. & Batiste, S.J. 2005. Teacher interpersonal behavior and adolescents’ motivation in mathematics: A comparison of learning disabled, average, and talented students. International Journal of Educational Research, 43, 39–54.
Mason, L. & Scrivani, L. 2004. Enhancing students’ mathematical beliefs: an intervention study. Learning and Instruction, 14, 153–176.
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Merja Meriläinen & Maarika Piispanen
live-roleplay as a tool – using real world operation cultures as tools for learning
abstract Anyone, who has ever been at school, has some kind of an idea what a good learning environment looks like. It is an everyday environment for those who attend school themselves, and it becomes close to parents through their chil-dren. For some, it is just a distant memory. In any case, most people have an opinion about it. Imagine: straight lines of desks, people sitting alone in a row, a daily program split into four to five different lessons, etc. When we think of today´s students – as Tapscott (2009) highlights – they are more open, more active, more broad-minded and less prejudiced than early generations. None-theless, our schools still look similar to those hundred years ago.
This article examines pedagogical changes in different learning contexts and aims to create a theoretical background for educators designing learning based on a learning theory in terms of Contextual pedagogical approach to-wards learning. The 21st Century Civil Skills Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework, introduced in this article, will help teachers to create learning en-vironments where 21st century civil skills will meet the modern pedagogy and core curriculum standards. With the help of the framework, together with the model of Contextual pedagogical approach towards learning, one is able to build a strong pedagogical foundation to create transformational 21st century learning environments.
inquiring new pedagogical innovationsIn recent years, educators and policy makers have been focused on student achievement and well-being. After the great Pisa success and glory, Finnish researchers raised up a discussion about future skills, school activity and mo-tivation, which arefields where Finnish students have not done so well. The problem in the Finnish school, according to Välijärvi (2011), is that despite the knowledge and skills Finnish students have, they do not trust their know-how and their attitude towards learning is poor. It is worth asking, could you find any answers by looking deeper into our pedagogical choices, operation cul-ture as well as learning environments in the Finnish education system?
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Meriläinen and Piispanen (2012) highlight, that learning should be seen as a conceptual change in the interaction with the environment. They want people involved to ask the following questions: What is good pedagogy – how does learning take place? What kind of information is needed? What motivates to seek information? What inspires and challenges students? How is the informa-tion addressed, connected and adapted? What is the teachers’ role in learning situations? How do they understand pedagogy? How do they adapt their own theoretical thoughts about sharing information and their practices and opera-tion culture when thinking of future pedagogy and skills needed in the future? What do they mean by a good learning environment?
It is common knowledge that it is not only spaces, places and tools you have to take into account in the educational changing process, but also pedagogy which has to develop simultaneously. Understanding the 21st century peda-gogy, knowledge and skills connected to it is in a central part of the teacher’s professional development.
The quickly changing 21st century challenges teachers to see life outside the school and recognize not only the core subjects but also the key skills needed outside the school. The report, Learning for the 21st Century, identifies nine types of learning skills, which are divided into three different key areas as follows in Table 1.
In a school and in other different learning contexts, in a society which devel-ops fast, the school should keep up to date in this development and should help students to learn not only the contents which arise from the curriculum, but also the skills and matters that one needs in the society both today and in the future. (cf. Levin 2011, 4; Zhao 2011, 4). What should be more important than a huge amount of detailed information, according to Meriläinen and Piispanen, (2012) is multidimensional education, which comprises the know-how of different skills to make good use of curriculum general information. The learning should be seen as a conceptual change in the interaction with the environment (cf. Zhao 2011, 2), which also contains the point of view of emotion education. Noddings (1997, 28) indeed crystallizes the idea that a loving and caring society is one of the most important 21st century mani-festations of learning situations. Too often, it is forgotten that cognitive and moral development go hand in hand and expand each other. When students study to pay attention to each other’s feelings and opinions, they at the same time extend their own thinking and learn to look at phenomena from different points of view.
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Table 1. 21st Century learning skills
21st Century Learning Skills
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS
THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS
INTERPERSONAL AND SELF- DIRECTIONAL SKILLS
Information and Media Literacy SkillsAccessing and managing information.Integrating and creating information. Evaluating and analyzing information.Communication SkillsUnderstanding, managing, and creating effective communicationsorallywrittenusing multimedia
Critical Thinking and Systems ThinkingExercising sound reasoning.Making complex choices.Understanding the interconnec-tions among systems.Problem Identification, Formulation & SolutionAbility toframeanalyzesolve problems.Creativity and Intellectual CuriosityDevelopimplementcommunicatenew ideas to others.
Interpersonal and Collaborative SkillsDemonstrating teamwork and working productively with others.Demonstrating and the ability to adapt to varied roles and responsibilities.Exercise empathy and respecting diverse perspectives.Self-DirectionMonitoring one’s own understanding and learning needsLocating resourcesTransferring learning from one domain to another.Accountability and AdaptabilityExercising personal responsibility and flexibility in personal, workplace and community contexts.Setting and meeting high standards and goals for one’s self and others.Social Responsibility
Acting responsibly with the interests of the larger community in mind.Demonstrating ethical behavior in personal, workplace and community contexts.
If you look at students born in the late 90s and early 2000s, you can see a huge gap between the knowledge and skills students learn in school and those they need in typical 21st century communities and working places. Today’s educa-tion system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn. Moving from content knowledge to learning and life skills is essential when training students to be successful in their lives after school.
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from contents to 21st century civil skills knowledgeTeachers’ challenge in today’s education is to strengthen students’ natural ways to learn and produce information in new learning environments. Teachers act as the construction workers of the bridges of learning between a school and other learning environments. It is their responsibility to make learning possible to diverse learners.
We have got closer to the ideas about a multi-layered connection between learning and environment: learning and environment are in connection with each other through three different aspects: growth and learning can be about learning from environment, in environment and with the help of it, and it can be learning for the environment and for solving its problems (Piispanen 2008; Åhlberg 1998). Ideally, there is each and every one of these aspects in learning and in environment themselves – they are not just individual factors, they are intertwining, supportive elements. Learning is thus seen as something happen-ing in connection with individuals and their environment. Norrena, Kankaan-ranta and Nieminen (2011) argue that there has to be a significant pedagogical change in school routines and pedagogical operations to move from teaching to learning and towards 21st century requirements. How will this change ma-terialize in school contexts – what are those pedagogical changes in the field of curriculum, planning and implementing and what are the roles of teachers and students?
The figure of 21st Century Civil Skills Pedagogical Content Knowledge (21st Century CSPCK) (Fig. 1) attempts to identify the nature of the vast pedagogical knowledge required when turning learning from traditional to transforma-tional i.e. integrating the 21st century civil skills into the authentic learning contexts and the curriculum.
At the heart of the 21st Century Civil Skills Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework, is the complex interplay of three primary forms of knowledge: 21st Century Civil Skills Knowledge (21st Century CSK), Pedagogical Knowl-edge (PK), and Curriculum Content Knowledge (CCK). It is essential to find the point of intersection of the 21st Century Civil Skills Pedagogical Content Knowledge, where the three primary forms of knowledge meet each other and use that essence as a starting point when creating innovative and enthu-siastic learning situations. (cf. Mishra & Koehler 2006, 2009) As Meriläinen and Piispanen (2012) highlight, the planning process is to be viewed from at least three different angles as pictured in Fig.1. What we mean by that is that the emphasis of learning should not lie on curriculum contents (subject
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contents) themselves, but these contents should act as tools for accomplishing 21st century civil skills by arranging learning situations and environments as authentic as possible to support a vast and deep understanding of every day phenomena. Also, the 21st century skills should not be seen as isolated skills or learning targets, but they should be examined as visible parts of a learning context. Together, all the three knowledge areas will create a successful and pedagogically meaningful learning process produced by students.
The changing society challenges the teacher profession, teaching and learn-ing environments as well as the school structures and operation cultures. This change requires above all new ways to act and to network with colleagues and other experts as well as parents. It also requires a new understanding on the part of the administration staff – everyone who is working in the field of education should be striving for the same goal and promote education to move towards transformational educational settings. In this changing process, it is essential to understand the connection between different knowledge ar-eas and to widen pedagogical thinking to cover not only the curriculum and content knowledge but also 21st century content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge as mentioned in Fig 1.
Figure 1. The 21st Century Civil Skills Pedagogical Content Knowledge (21st Century CSPCK) (Follows Mishra & Koehler 2006, 2009)
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The Kokkola University Consortium Adult Teacher Education Program has been developing primary school teacher studies based on the 21st Centu-ry CSPCK –framework. The research report of ICT use in European schools (2013) supports the common knowledge about the lack of technology use in Finnish schools. The focus should not merely be on the use of technol-ogy but on the old fashioned, teacher centered operation cultures, where ICT has no place from the point of view of the students. We argue (Meriläinen, Piispanen & Valli 2013) that even in the Finnish teacher education, instead of learning important 21st century civil skills; the emphasis still is mostly on subject knowledge, concepts and planning of subject teaching. It is obvious that we need to effect curriculum-based changes to meet the challenges the surrounding society and its habits will bring to our school system. The focus in the development project carried out in Kokkola University Consortium in 2012-2015 (Piispanen & Meriläinen) will lie on the following aspects, which are to be considered closer in later research reports:
trans-disciplinary curriculum and assessment 21st century civil skills individual learning paths authentic learning environments authentic learning activities and tasks live role play in learning projects
no more isolation – learning in authentic environmentsWhat does this mean in practice from the teachers’ point of view? Let us take a little closer look at the planning process. Where to begin, how to put the emphasis on the needed skills, what is the connection between subject con-tents and real life in practice, what does an authentic learning environment mean? These are some of the questions that you as teachers will have to pay attention to when moving from traditional pedagogy towards transformational pedagogical settings. Flipping the sight from curriculum to society moves the emphasis from teaching curriculum contents to learning real life phenomena and skills that we need in authentic learning environments and learning situa-tions. The planning begins from the premise of individual students and their skills, knowledge, interests and enthusiasm (in contrastto traditional planning where the planning is made to fit the school constructions; timing, text books, classrooms, etc.) Blending ICT with study plans becomes natural when the school tasks and activities begin to remain real life tasks and activities as you can see in Table 2.
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Table 2. Contextual-pedagogical study plan in a nutshell (5th grade)
Phenomenon (authentic/ outside the curriculum/ learning environment)
Students role (authentic –rises from the phenomenon)
Task (authentic –supports 21st Century civil Skills to develop)
To plan a Summer Camp in a Ranch
Ranch owner / Camp director To create an enthusiastic camp program, marketing plan, web & mobile pages and radio/ television commercial.
In this model (Table 2.), as Meriläinen and Piispanen (2012) state, the teacher holds the curriculum contents up to the surrounding world and connects them to real life phenomena. This will help students to understand and link the cur-riculum contents with the life outside of the school. The curriculum contents act as tools for developing 21st century civil skills as explained in Figure 1. The 21st Century Civil Skills Content Knowledge Framework will focus on a variety of different knowledge areas to develop both skills and content understand-ing. The pedagogical knowledge has to meet both the 21st century skills and the curriculum contents to be able to create learning situations, tasks, activities and environments that will develop 21st century civil skills pedagogical con-tent knowledge in a school context.
Underneath (Table 3.) there is an example of a learning task, which will fit into the 21st century civil skills pedagogical content knowledge framework. The task is planned for 5th grade students and the contents come from the 5th grade curriculum (Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004).
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Table 3. 5th grade curriculum contents related to given phenomena and tasks
PHENOMENON: To plan a Summer Camp on the Ranch
TASK: To create an enthusiastic camp program, marketing plan, web & mobile pages and radio/ television commercial
CROSS CURRICULAR THEMES: Media skills and communication, Participatory Citizenship and Entrepreneurship and Technology and the individual
Mother tongue and literature:INTERACTION SKILLSThe pupil will learn skills of ac-tive listening and communication in various communication situa-tions; they will feel encouraged to take part in discussions and will try to consider the recipients in their own communication.The pupil will learn to work with text environments in which words, illustrations, and sounds interactSKILLS IN PRODUCING TEXTThe pupil will learn to create a variety of texts, both orally and in writingRELATIONSHIP WITH LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND OTHER CULTUREThe pupil will gain a basic knowledge of the media and utilize communications media purposefully.
Biology and GeographyThe pupil will learn to move about in the natural environment and observe and investigate nature outdoorsThe pupil will learn to draw and interpret maps, and use statistics, diagrams, pictures, and electronic messages as a source of geographic information
MusicThe pupils will build their creative relationship with music and its expressive possibilities, by means of composing
ArtsThe pupil will learn to evaluate their own and others’ visual expression and working approaches, such as visual, content, and technical solutions, and to employ the key concepts of art.The pupil will work independently and as a community member in art projects
MathematicsThe pupil will learn to understand that concepts form structures
OutcomesA Marketing plan: When, what and where + budgetPoster size A0 to inform and wake interestWeb page to inform and contact (Wix & Go Mobile Wix)Commercial to YouTube & PodcastFacebook Group to connect participantsCamp program Writing an action plan to make the plan and implementation concrete and understandable
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assessment According to Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2004, 260)
The task of assessment during the course of studies is to guide and encourage studying and to depict how well the student has met the objectives established for growth and learning. It is the task of as-sessment to help the student form a realistic image of his/her learn-ing and development, and thus to support the student’s personality growth, too.
In transformational pedagogical settings, the assessment will be seen as learn-ing itself in contrast to traditional pedagogy where assessment is seen as in-formation of learning. In a Contextual-pedagogical approach to learning, the assessing criteria will be visible and well known already in the beginning of the learning process. It is important to begin the planning process by iden-tifying the learning goals and criteria for successful learning. After that, the task and activity designing process are easy to accomplish so that the tasks and activities might help students to achieve these goals. Assessing will act as a tool for guiding students through the learning path –the learning aims will be achieved through the learning tasks based on assessing criteria. This is, as Meriläinen and Piispanen (2012) state, particularly important in order that stu-dents might understand and recognize what is expected from them and how the assessment system is built.
learners as investigators of real life phenomenaWhen transferring from traditional education to transformational, one has to imagine new ways to think about teaching and learning. According to Chaltain (2011), traditional schools assume that students bear the main responsibility for learning, while in transformational schools the responsibility is sharedwith the members of a learning team that includes, and extends beyond the teacher and student. In terms of student achievement, a traditional school emphasizes test results instead of students’ aspirations and life options which a transforma-tional school, in turn, focuses on. In a transformational school, the target will be in working to build passion for learning in all students.
In the phenomenon-based approach, the real reality is central instead of the doctrine contents and the welling problems involved (Meriläinen & Piispanen 2012). Instead of one discipline, the examination is directed to the phenom-enon from a transdisciplinary point of view. The learning is not restricted to
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learning one truth. With the dialogue between the curriculum and surrounding real life, one will look for answers by thinking, by concluding, by examining and developing the 21st century civil skills simultaneously.
The phenomenon-based approach in the context of basic education is a way to examine the curriculum in relation to the surrounding society. The curric-ulum and different subject contents will be examined transdisciplinary and one can understand the connections between the curriculum and surrounding society. As a result, you can recognize and see the operation culture of the school reflecting the operation culture of the external world. (Meriläinen & Piispanen 2012) The curriculum will come alive as authentic as possible with real life tasks, roles and environments as mentioned earlier.
When examining the phenomenon-based approach, it is important to remem-ber that it is not a question of a pedagogical method. Within the phenome-non-based approach one (as a teacher) begins to adapt real world conventions to daily routines and gradually the operation culture begins to be similar to the surrounding society. At this stage, the 21st century civil skills pedagogical content knowledge has materialized and students are able to develop 21st century civil skills in a natural way as a part of their learning process in daily school routines.
In a Contextual-pedagogical approach towards learning, special attention is paid to the compatibility of a learning context and pedagogy. Both the context and the pedagogy have crucial significance from the point of view of learning. Figure 2. compresses the connections between learning contexts, pedagogy, curriculum and phenomena involved in real life contexts.
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in relationship with the authentic contexts Piispanen and Meriläinen (2013) argue that in a Contextual-pedagogical ap-proach towards learning, special attention is paid to the growth of 21st Cen-tury CSPCK knowledge. The skills, context and pedagogy will have crucial significance in all learning situations. Where traditional pedagogy and multi-disciplinary approach to integration emphasize pedagogy and curriculum as tools for creating learning situations, the transformational pedagogy connects the three knowledge areas together. The learning situations will be discovered in the heart of the expanded knowledge acquisition as shown in Figure 2.
The pedagogical planning focuses on children and their uniqueness which in-fluences the choices that a teacher will make concerning the learning context as well as pedagogy, in contrast to traditional pedagogy where the choices are often made for the teacher by the school structures, schedules, classrooms and books.
Figure 2. Contextual – pedagogical approach to learning (Meriläinen & Piispanen, 2012.)
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The basic idea behind the contextual pedagogical learning environment ac-cording to Piispanen and Meriläinen (2013) lies on problem based; investi-gate learning in authentic learning environments with authentic learning tasks. Learning can thus be seen learner centered, flexible, illustrative and suitable for many kinds of learners (See Piispanen 2008; Sahlberg 2011; Zhao 2011). All suitable places appropriate to learning can be seen as good learning environ-ments. It is also possible for students to create their own environment during the learning process. It is essential, in contextual pedagogical approach, to examine the curriculum in a transdisciplinary way. In different learning pro-cesses, the borders between different subjects will disappear and the focus will be on everyday phenomena that children are familiar with. It is the teachers’ responsibility to see how the core curriculum is manifested in children’s lives and to plan and organize learning situations motivated enough to make chil-dren devoted to given learning tasks. The teacher’s job is to act as a curriculum expert who is able to see the connections between the core curriculum and real life, a pedagogical specialist who is able to create enthusiastic learning situations, tasks and environments and finally the one who has a good student knowledge and who is willing and able to plan learning tasks and activities appropriate to each individual in one’s class. In the very end it is the teacher who creates learning tasks from pedagogically meaningful points of view and contacts real life specialists who are able to give authentic learning experi-ences in authentic ways and act as co-operation partners in real learning situ-ations. (See Kumpulainen & al., 2011).
It is essential to recognize, name and utilize the learner’s versatile know-how in contextual pedagogical approach to learning. Children should be able to use and show their best know-how and abilities as well as learn new skills from peers and under the teacher’s guidance while working in authentic learn-ing situations. Students’ individual needs are seen crucial in the contextual pedagogical learning process. Different learners will have possibilities to work at their best as well as show their best while working.
Bringing enthusiasm to learning In the Contextual-pedagogical model of learning, the essential change con-cerns the students’ role as knowledge constructors: the culture of working, for the most part, alone with individual tasks is transferred to a culture of col-laboration, which supports high levels of collegiality, team work, and dialogue about given tasks. (Meriläinen & Piispanen 2012.)
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Instead of just “accomplishing” the learning tasks, the students are directed to be active and self-piloting collaborative learners. This means a huge change in the traditional teacher-student roles: the teachers will no more be the know-it-all persons, instead their role is to help students to address information, to operate among the information and above all, lighting the learning enthusiasm among the students. In this model, the teacher will see the student’s best po-tential and takes risks to make that visible. When taking risks, the teachers will push their boundaries as teachers –this is where colleague support is highly needed. In a transformational school setting, teachers engage in professional dialogue with colleagues; share ideas, knowledge, and techniques; and par-ticipate in collaborative problem solving around classroom issues. To make the student’s challenges visible will not commonly happen with the traditional methods. It is essential to activate the students to work together so that the given tasks might support the development of the 21st century civil skills (Ko-stiainen & Rautiainen 2011, 190). As Meriläinen and Piispanen (2012) highlight, the learning tasks should be closely connected to students’ real lives, interest-ing, they should be challenging and enable students’ natural creativity and know-how. It is of great importance to give students roles, which will motivate and guide them to understand the tasks in authentic contexts. Instead of filling the practice book, one could be a travel guide, whose task is to plan a journey to the river of Nile, only to mention one example.
In the contextual-pedagogical model of learning, the 21st century skills are not necessarily the key objects of teaching, but their presence and use in different learning tasks will lay a solid foundation to deeper understanding, learning, knowing and creativity. (Hargreaves 2007, 223-224; Kumpulainen, Krokfors, Lipponen, Tissari, Hilppö, & Rajala 2011, 46; Sahlberg 2011, 4; Zhao 2011, 2–3). When planning a learning process, paying attention to these skills with other two knowledge part areas (content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge) will make it possible to create learning environments and learning situations that will support the development of the 21st century civil skills con-tent knowledge in the school context. These skills need to be developed con-tinuously when processing learning tasks in versatile learning environments.
When learning is particularly directed to the learning processes, problem solv-ing and meeting the challenges, the assessment system has to be planned carefully. The emphasis is put on the assessment of the process instead of the result as mentioned earlier in this article. The assessment criteria have to be opened beforehand so that the students are able to set goals for their own learning. This is how students will develop their thinking and planning skills as well as self-direction skills, which are seen important in 21st century peda-gogy and learning.
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finding unique ways to learn It is a central matter to pay attention to the students’ individual needs in a con-textual- pedagogical approach. A transformational learning process enables diverse students to learn according to one’s own best ability and to bring one’s individual know-how visible. The paths toward set learning goals will be as unique as your students – the beforehand given goals and assessment criteria will guide students step by step towards the set goals, the paths will naturally become differentiated, never the less learning has taken place.
When the curriculum contents are connected and experienced in a trans-diciplinary way in authentic learning conditions, students have possibilities to consider the given tasks multiple and visualize these versatile ways. This gives an opportunity to potentialize individual learning styles and unique tempera-ments, which are mostly seen as problems in our school system.
The versatile examination of phenomena and the multiple choices of indi-vidual learning paths will create the possibility to learn and understand phe-nomena from the student´s individual perspective in collaboration with others. The contextual – pedagogical approach directs the inspection to the teachers’ knowledge of information as well as to their pedagogical solutions which are based on their ideas of the phenomenon called learning (Piispanen & Meri-läinen 2013). In this learning approach it is central to help students to react positively to the challenges and to help them to find and identify their own strengths, which will help them to face and succeed in meeting the challenges that sometimes seem too difficult for them.
If you think our future will require better schools, you’re wrong. The future of education calls for entirely new learning environments. If you think we will need better teachers, you’re wrong. Tomorrow’s learners will need guides who take on fundamentally different roles.(Knowledge Works Foundation and Institute for the Future 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning.)
conclusionThe life of 21st century students outside the school context looks totally different when comparing it to the habits and environments we still have in 21st century schools. Almost every student today has instant access to infor-mation through technology and the web, manages their own acquisition of knowledge through informal learning, and has progressed beyond consum-
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ers of content to become producers and publishers. As a result of that quick change, traditional teaching and learning methods and environments are be-coming less effective at engaging students and motivating them to study and learn.
The quickly changing 21st century challenges teachers to see life outside the school and recognize not only the core subjects but also the key skills needed there. In the Contextual –pedagogical model of learning the focus in learning is put on strengthening these skills. The curriculum contents will give the tools for teachers to create learning tasks that will support and develop 21st century skills when learning central content knowledge in authentic learning situations.
Contextual-pedagogical model of learning connects the teacher’s pedagogical expertise, student knowledge and the content knowledge and learning envi-ronments as they exist in authentic conditions inside an outside the school context. Neither the pedagogical knowledge nor the content (curriculum) knowledge itself is enough when creating 21st century learning environments that will support the 21st century civil skills content knowledge. It is a ques-tion of a teacher’s pedagogical developing process where one begins to under-stand the connections between learning and real life. This developing process can lead at its best to transformational educational settings where the 21st century civil skills, content knowledge and well-being will develop side by side in authentic and enthusiastic learning environments.
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Marko Kuuskorpi & Nuria Cabellos González
Physical learning environments: learning in the future
introductionIn recent years technological progress and educational programmers’ have be-come interconnected in a desire to reshape the world in which students and facilitators learn and teach with the ultimate aim of improving our collective intelligence. Recent international studies on the future of teaching and learn-ing have presented notable different perspectives on the world of education from the one we may see today (see Alexander & Reynolds 2009, 176–192). Rapid social changes together with a phenomenal advance in communication and information facilities, in addition to the Internet mean that 21st century stu-dents and teachers are seeking new facilities to cater for their changing teach-ing and learning needs. During the last century socio-cultural changes, the development of conduct systems, different pedagogical methods and the rapid development of information and communication technology helped to shape the teaching and operating cultures of schools and the expectations towards learning environments. Now, however, research shows that educators, facili-tators and teachers can no longer work in the same manner as their 19th and 20th century predecessors, but must adapt to a more modern way of learning.
This paper explores the question: what will tomorrow’s physical learning envi-ronments be like? It also presents the conclusions of the research and product development projects that in a development of the physical learning environ-ment. The examples of learning environments will particularly focus on devel-opment projects funded by the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). The main goal of the study is to contribute to the quality of education and to promote new methods, networks and tools, both locally and globally. Our project also aims to provide flexible space solutions that can adapt quickly and easily to changes in the curriculum, making a link between pedagogical theory and practice adapting the demands of today’s school community to the rapid and constant developments in ICT.
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conceptualising the physical learning environment The concept of “learning environment” will become increasingly significant as schools of the future become strategic centres for lifelong learning. The term “learning environment” is used liberally in educational discourse because of the emerging use of information technologies for educational purposes on the one hand, and the constructivist concept of knowledge and learning on the other (Mononen-Aaltonen 1998). A traditional definition of a learning envi-ronment categorises learning according to five different contexts: local, social, didactic, technological and physical (see Manninen 2007, 27).
But the term “physical learning environment” has proven difficult to define; there has not been a common or established definition for the concept. The OECD (2006) has defined “educational space” as “a physical space that sup-ports multiple and diverse teaching and learning programmes and pedagogies, including current technologies; one that demonstrates optimal, cost-effective building performance and operation over time; one that respects and is in harmony with the environment; and one that encourages social participation, providing a healthy, comfortable, safe, secure and stimulating setting for its occupants”. In its narrowest sense, a physical learning environment is seen as a concrete classroom and, in its widest sense, as a combination of formal and in-formal education systems where learning takes place both inside and outside
Figure 1. The widening of the physical learning environment (Nuikkinen 2009)
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of schools (Manninen & al. 2007). Atkin (2011, 26–27) widens the definition by including the constructed environment and the available information sources to an entity that includes the outside world as part of the learning process. Nuikkinen (2009, 52) summarizes the widening of the physical learning envi-ronment, as shown in Figure 1.
The concept of the physical learning environment with respect to physical structures relates to the physical space, equipment and tools within the school (OECD 2012a, 18). Lehtinen (1997, 21) suggests that the concept has evolved into an even more complex structure that includes teaching equipment, sourc-es of information and events outside of schools, where students can take part in the learning process both directly and virtually (see Atkin 2012, 26–27).
The term learning environment has evolved as a result of the recent chang-es taking place in pedagogy, whereby actual learning has been transposed outside of schools due to the developments in communication and informa-tion technology. According Prensky (2010) new information technology has already brought about significant changes in school and its learning environ-ments. Yet the immense quantity of information available and easy access to social networks have served to weaken the link between schools and learn-ing and therefore modified the traditional teacher-student scenario (Kuuskorpi 2012, 181). The learning process is becoming more co-operative, transforming the role of the teacher into that of a learner too.
From a practical standpoint the physical learning environment and the basic structure of school teaching spaces do not seem to have evolved much over the past century (Kühn, 2011, 19; Kuuskorpi, 2012, 180). This fact inspired the research team to investigate the reason why, despite the recent changes in pedagogy and the widespread use of information technology inside class-rooms and school spaces, the physical learning environment has not man-aged to keep up with this evolution. Several scholars have criticised traditional school teaching for conveying too much theoretical information and prevent-ing more profound learning (see Prensky 2010; Tappscott 2009). They claim that inert knowledge is relevant for exams but not for real-world problems which in many cases needs new kind of innovation and creativity. This idea is posing new challenges and exerting pressure to bring about changes in phys-ical learning environments.
In order to plan and construct effective physical learning environments, not only technical specifications need to be elaborated; but qualitative aspects also need to be considered (Atkin 2011, 25; OECD, 2012b, 63; Nuikkinen 2009, 64).
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The concept of “quality design” has become essential all over the world. It re-lates to school construction and, more particularly, in defining quality school physical learning environment, measuring it and analysing the results (OECD, 2006). With regard to quality criteria for school buildings and design, the key actors are obviously the students; requirements are determined by specific age groups, in conjunction with societal needs and regulations relating to usability and safety (Heitor 2005).
It has been demonstrated that international comparisons of education can be achieved through comprehensive quality management and quality criteria (Finnish National Board of Education 2008; OECD 2006). As a result, the em-phasis is shifting from developing physical learning environments using norms and regulations to comparing these environments on the basis of qualitative improvement (OECD 2009).
a learning environment is an entityWith these considerations in mind, Kuuskorpi (2012, 182) considers four basic elements to be the essential aspects of a physical learning environment: so-cietal, informal learning processes, individuality, and formal teaching. These elements form an interactive whole in which the physical learning environ-ment plays a central role in reforming the school’s operational culture. At the same time these environments should be analysed and developed in a holistic
Figure 2. Supportive learning contexts (Kuuskorpi 2012)
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manner (Blyth, Almeida, Forrester, Gorey, & Hostens 2012, 56). Based on this view the physical learning environment is understood to be the learning space and its operational environment. Within it, flexible and modifiable learning spaces and their related learning environments are formed through pairs of dimensions. They are all interactive and totally supportive of one another, as shown in Figure 2.
Our study stemmed from a project called Forum for the Future, which was funded by the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) and it took place over a period of three years 2009-2011. This project arose from a common concern shared by groups of students, teachers and educational administrators to implement changes needed in physical learning environments. Our main priority was to contribute to the quality of education in our individual contexts as well as internationally.
Six schools from Belgium, Finland, Holland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden participated in the study. The selected schools for our project shared similar common features such as infrastructure, educational level and socio-economic conditions.
This study was set out to conceptualise the relationship between education, the physical learning environment and the facilities needed by its users. Par-ticipants were asked to identify the components that make up good qualitative and modifiable learning spaces. It was commonly agreed that an improve-ment in educational facilities, especially classrooms, was key in this matter. The study also attempted to highlight the qualitative factors and user-oriented design of physical learning environments. When we compared international physical learning environment criteria and their associate recommendations, we found that expectations relating to changeability, flexibility and sustainabil-ity were also relevant factors for the participants.
implementing the studyInformation on the different perceptions of users and school authorities was collected from the six European participant schools using various methods. The first task undertaken consisted in a design for an ideal classroom. 250 students aged 14 and 15 from the six participating countries completed a de-sign of their ideal model classroom, using a 1:50 scale which included sets of furniture and equipment. Students were asked to arrange the furniture to suit their learning needs according to how they would wish tomorrow’s classroom to be shaped. They were also asked to suggest alternative space solutions.
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In addition to the students’ task, 65 teachers from the six different countries completed questionnaires related to the topic and 35 administrative school authorities were also interviewed.
The study also took into consideration the views of a variety of expert groups such as policy makers, architects, interior designers, artists and information technology specialists. Processing the information gathered from these experts was key to a successful development and planning process (Evagorou & al., 2009). We therefore used ‘process simulation’, which is a targeted research method used in specific circumstances such as when the physical learning environment is inspected through a co-operative design process (Smeds et al., 2007). This technique has been used in Finland to plan large-scale future physical learning environments and is proving to be an effective design tool because it enhances users’ capacity to have an effective impact on their work environment. The process simulation method can be illustrated with the aid of the following figure.
In addition to a phenomenological analysis, which can be effective when dealing with verbal answers and pictorial responses, a hermeneutic approach was also used to broaden the concepts and find points of convergence. Our research was based on the notion that by describing the various perceptions of school authorities and users, we could acquire an accurate overall impression of a high-quality physical learning environment. One element of the study in-volved the evaluation of the quality of the physical learning environment: this was understood to be a value judgement resulting from the users’ everyday experiences and their subsequent interpretation of them (Heidegger, 2000; Marton and Booth, 1997).
Figure 3. The different phases of the process simulation method (Smeds & al. 2006)
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study findingsThe results of the study highlighted several key factors relating to a quality physical learning environment, namely the relevance of the teaching space as a whole as well as their specific needs in relation to furniture and equipment. It showed that the physical learning environment is pivotal to the users’ desire to develop the school’s operational environment as well as their need to renew its operational culture. The more meaningful and challenging the operational environment is, the more the user is willing to improve the physical learning environment. The needs of students, teachers and head-teachers call for prac-tical solutions and these notably affect the physical learning environment.
The physical learning environment is regarded as a fundamental part of the learning environment and its quality is a central factor in measuring society’s appreciation of teaching and learning. Therefore, an inadequate interest in physical learning environments sends out a message of unwillingness to de-velop the current learning environment as a whole.
When a physical learning environment offers resources and possibilities that support new teaching methods and learning goals, schools are much more prompt to change their operational culture. The school as a central provider of educational services was conceived as a platform responsible for the creation of a natural institutional service, as well as a facilitator of health, wellbeing and sustainable environmental services all delivered by qualified experts. Blyth (2011, 15) highlights that school facilities should also be used by the commu-nities they serve for services other than education. The different senses used to describe the modifiability and flexibility of the learning environment at a general level also emphasized the new meanings expressing interaction and social teaching and learning processes. Libraries, public spaces, and youth and health services were considered a natural part of a school building, providing services to other members of the community as well. At the same time, schools provide learning possibilities for children who are learning to use public ser-vices. As part of the study’s simulation Kotimäki school in Kaarina was evalu-ated. It has a public sports hall, library, health care and youth facilities on the first floor (Figure 4).
The school as a physical learning environment was expected to offer a range of versatile space solutions, which offer opportunities to use an array of differ-ent teaching methods and consequently facilitate various learning processes. At the same time relating indoor and outdoor spaces is another critical aspect of school design, such that the school and surrounding community can take advantage (Blyth, Almeida, Forrester, Gorey, & Zepeda 2012a, 78). However,
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the chances of current physical learning environments in schools were seen still to be limited when it came to meeting the needs of formal and informal teaching and learning.
Although different factors were emphasized on the other educational levels, it is relevant to highlight that meaning networks connected to functionality, social perspectives and versatility were also emphasized. These helped to de-scribe the flexibility and modifiability of the teaching space both at classroom level and cluster level - i.e. combination of several classrooms – as well as at equipment and furniture level. However the results stressed the need for a connection of the pedagogical space to the existing space as a whole, thus areas of different sizes could be connected together and functional spaces forming a more connected space could be used for a variety of purposes.
Figure 4. Layout of Kotimäki school (Kuuskorpi 2012)
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Architects, principals and teachers will need to take this holistic conceptu-al approach into account to manage the building not in terms of individual spaces. The respondents of the project wanted to use the physical learning environment in a more versatile way, which made the combination of subject study and more natural simultaneous teaching possible. Classrooms are more flexible when they are connected into a central multipurpose space (Blyth & al. 2012b, 57). The space estimated in the study’s simulation provides an op-portunity to utilize the multipurpose space in the hall effectively (Figure 5).
Despite the differences within educational systems, the basic principles of the use of physical learning environments and the concepts behind ideal teaching spaces are very similar; even though previous analysis of space standards be-tween different nations has indicated that each country has its own standard-ising systems, context and costs for example. (Blyth et al. 2012b, 56–57). The results gathered from their study indicate that pressure for change in teach-ing and learning is felt at national level. As a result expectations for physical learning environments do not differ significantly between countries. Moreover,
Figure 5. Simulated learning area (Kuuskorpi 2012)
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today’s well-educated and committed teachers offer a still largely unharnessed resource for planning and implementing future learning environments.
Supported by views of supervision and accessibility, a rectangular space be-came the natural choice for teaching. However, when the planning process takes into account both supervision and flexible movement, multiple spaces could be used in teaching and learning at the same time.
Once all of the submissions had been examined, a single model was select-ed from all those presented by the participating students. A mock-up of the selected model was made and tested by groups of students. The resulting simulation provided a prime example of a learning space that supports teach-ing and learning operations, while demonstrating flexibility, sustainability and modifiability. The model is illustrated below.
Future technological advances and developments in social networks and me-dia, (as well as different teaching and learning methods) will undoubtedly re-quire dynamic teaching spaces. The design of the proposed model takes these factors into account. The carefully conceived flexible layout and furniture ar-rangement facilitates individual, pair and group work methods. The simulta-neous enhanced interaction between the student and the teacher, on the one hand, and the physical environment, on the other, optimises new information
Figure 6. School in 21st (Archeus achitects 2010, www.archeus.fi)
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Figure 7. The ideal learning space (Kuuskorpi 2012, 262)
flows. (Lehtinen & al. 1997). Respondents perceived the traditional classroom as a passive area, which hindered the full use of space. They associated dy-namic teaching spaces with flexibility and the possibility of creating different furniture configurations. The latter can be achieved by ensuring that furniture is mobile and that there is free and easy access to information technology. A dynamic teaching space concept is summarised in Figure 8.
The results of our research did not discredit the traditional classroom as such. Rather, it called out for urgent additional spaces of different sizes in optimal locations to support teaching and learning processes. Spaces should offer var-ious possibilities for teaching and learning to take place. These ranged from individual study to large group activities and those that supported teacher coaching and individual work. Working tables should be configured in a va-riety of ways to meet different educational activities (Blyth et al. 2012, 74). This flexibility fosters new types of teaching and learning, as illustrated above, which are determined by the demands of the subject or activity. In order to
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Figure 8. A dynamic teaching space concept (Kuuskorpi 2011)
be successful, the physical learning environment needs to be equipped with both modular workstations and areas with comfortable seating, hence sup-porting individual learning. It should also be possible to adapt the furniture to different configurations: this flexibility is vital for sustainable environments. Similarly, teaching and information technology tools facilitate flexible teach-ing. Therefore it should be easy to move equipment and wireless terminals for different subjects and work methods. The key operational elements of the teaching space are illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1. The key operational elements of the teaching space (Kuuskorpi 2012)
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conclusionNuikkinen (2009, p. 278) argues that users’ expectations and the theoretical concept of what makes a good school building do not match. In practice, to a certain extent this runs counter to traditional planning, which on the whole requires teachers and students – as users of the buildings – to adapt to given environments (Dudek, 2000; Sanoff, 2009).
The research findings were clear: all participants in the study recognised that significant changes must be made to the physical learning environment in order to improve the needs of its users. Traditional pedagogical and physical structures need to be remodelled in parallel so as to respond to the challenges posed by changes in schools’ operational culture.
In order for a school to develop into a dynamic physical learning environment, there needs to be a behavioural change in relation to planning and producing spatial solutions. Change cannot occur without input from teachers and stu-dents: the main school users. Teachers and students who conceived the study applauded the significant shift away from the traditional classroom and said how much they would like to work in a space like the one proposed here.
If a school provides a quality work environment for students, this will facilitate the acquisition of skills that are important for society. The choice of school equipment is important – it should be versatile, resistant, sustainable, environ-mentally friendly and easy to repair. User-based innovative processes should be at the heart of designing the physical learning environment of tomorrow’s schools. This process should take into account the global needs of students, teachers, school administrators and the community, and of course, the envi-ronment. A judicious selection of products and services that minimises nega-tive environmental impacts will also be of benefit to all.
In conclusion, it is necessary to point out that even the most rewarding physi-cal learning environments or the most studied solutions can ever be complete or final. Among constant changes and reforms the needs for learning spaces also change. The need is best met if the solutions are flexible and variable. Thus the learning space simulated based on this study is reforming in practical daily teaching. One model designed by a user is illustrated below.
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references Alexander, P.A; Schallert, D.L. & Reynolds, R.E. 2009. What is learning anyway? A topo-graphical perspective. Condidered Educational Psychologist 44(3): 176–192.
Atkin, J. 2011. Transforming spaces for learning. In OECD Designing for Education. Com-pendium for Exemplary Educational Facilities 2011. OECD Centre for Effective Learning Environments. Paris: OECD publishing, 24–31.
Blyth, A. 2011. OECD looking back over 50 years of educational buildings. In OECD Designing for Education. Compendium for Exemplary Educational Facilities 2011. OECD Centre for Effective Learning Environments. Paris: OECD publishing, 13–18.
Blyth, A., Almeida, R., Forrester, D., Gorey, A. & Zepeda J. 2012a. Upgrading School Build-ings in Mexico with Social Participation. The Better School Programme. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Blyth, A., Almeida, R., Forrester, D., Gorey, A. & Hostens, G. 2012b. Modernising Secondary School Buildings in Portugal. Paris: OEDC Publishing.
Dudek, M. 2000. Architecture of Schools: The New Learning Environments. Oxford: Archi-tectural Press.
Dumont, H., D. Istance and F. Benavides (Eds.) 2010. The Nature of Learning: Using Re-search to Inspire Practice. Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Evagorou, M., Korfiatis, K., Nicolaou, C. & Constantinou, C. 2009. An investigation of the potential of interactive simulations for developing system thinking skills in elementary school: A case study with fifth-graders and sixth-graders. International Journal of Science Education 31(5), 655–674.
Figure 9. The ideal learning space reorganized (Kuuskorpi 2012, 263)
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Perusopetuksen laatukriteerit. 2008. Opetusministeriön väliraportti, Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education.
Heidegger, M. 2000. Oleminen ja aika. (In Finnish R. Kupiainen). Tampere: Vastapaino.
Heitor, T. 2005. Potential problems and challenges in defining international design princi-ples for school. Evaluating Quality in Educational Facilities. Paris: OECD/PEB. www.oecd.org/edu/facilities/evaluatingquality.
Kuuskorpi, Marko. 2012. Future physical learning environment. User oriented flexible and changeable teaching spaces. Doctoral thesis in Education. University of Turku. Faculty of Education. Department of Teacher Education in Rauma.
Kühn, C. 2011. Learning environments for the 21st century. In OECD Designing for Educa-tion. Compendium for Exemplary Educational Facilities 2011. OECD Centre for Effective Learning Environments. Paris: OECD publishing, 19–23.
Lehtinen, E. 1997. Verkkopedagogiikka. Helsinki: Edita.
Manninen, A. 2007. Oppimista tukevat ympäristöt. Johdatus oppimisympäristöajatteluun. Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
Marton, F. & Booth, S. 1997. Learning and Awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Mononen-Aaltonen, M. 1998. A Learning Environment – A Euphemism for Instruction or a Potential for Dialogue?. In S. Tella (Ed.) Aspects of Media Education: Strategic Imperatives in the Information Age. Media Education Publication 8, 163–212.
Nuikkinen, K. 2009. Koulurakennus ja hyvinvointi. Teoriaa ja käyttäjän kokemuksia pe-ruskouluarkkitehtuurista. Tampereen yliopisto. Kasvatustieteiden laitos. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1398.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2006. CELE Organis-ing Framework on Evaluating Quality in Educational Spaces. www.oecd.org/edu/facilities/evaluatingquality.
OECD. 2009. International Pilot Study on the Evaluation of Quality In Educational Spaces (EQES): User Manual. www.oecd.org/edu/facil ities/evaluatingquality.
Prensky, M. 2010. Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Sanoff, H. 2009. Research Based Design of an Elementary School. Open House International 34 (1), 9–16.
Smeds, R., Jaatinen, M., Hirvensalo, A. & Kilpiö, A. 2006. SimLab process simulation method as a boundary object for inter-organizational innovation. In B.A. Hussein, R. Smeds & J. Riis (Eds.) Multidisciplinary Research on Simulation Methods and Educational Games in Industrial Management. Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Experimental Interactive Learning in Industrial Management. Trondheim, Norway, 187–195.
Smeds, R., Pöyry, P., Huhta, E. & Vanamo, J. 2007. Process simulation for social innovation. Case: Planning the school for the future. In K-D. Thoben, J. Baalsrud Hauge, R. Smeds & J. Riis (Eds.) Multidisciplinary Research on New Methods for Learning and Innovation in Enterprise Networks. Proceedings from the 11th International Workshop of the IFIP WG 5.7 Special Interest Group on Experimental Interactive Learning in Industrial Management. Bremener Schriften zu Betriebstechnik und Arbeitswissenschaft. Universität Bremen. Band 59. Verlag Mainz, 175–188.
Tapscott, D. 2009. Grown Up Digital. How the Net Generation is Changing Your World? New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
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Jukka Sulonen & Krisse Sulonen
the Grammar of a modern school Building. A comparative study on schools and the changing ways of learning.
introduction The society has changed in 50 years, and during the last 15 years the world has turned from analogic to digital. School architecture has also seen great chang-es, but at the same time the changes have been small and slow; the basic unit of the school facilities is still, despite the changes in ideals and objectives, a classroom fitted for 32 pupils. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the objec-tives and reality of teaching methods and pedagogy (Vitikka 2009). Methods, ideals and structures are in a constant but slow state of fermentation. With the changes in methods, the usability of buildings is frequently on trial. In the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education, from 2004, the objective is an open and interactive operational culture that supports co-operation. In addition, the learning environment should be flexible and versatile, it should support collaboration and be aesthetical. In the outline for a new curricu-lum, to be published in 2016, the same objectives are emphasised even more strongly. (Finnish National Board of Education 2004 and 2012.)
The platform of the current Finnish government includes an objective to im-prove the quality of basic education. It underlines, among others, the signifi-cance of a safe and accessible school and a reduction in class sizes as well as an equal opportunity for developing one’s creativity, skills and various talents. The programme’s objectives also include strengthening the position of prac-tical and arts subjects, sports, environmental education and value education. (Prime Minister’s Office 2011, 31–33.) We can no longer speak about a school of the future – the future is already here. A better concept would be “modern school”.
Finland has fared well in the international PISA comparisons of the OECD in 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012. PISA is an evaluation of the learning results of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, natural sciences, and problem solving skills. Despite the success, the research reports of STAKES (currently National Institute for Health and Welfare) and WHO from 2004, 2008 and 2010 show that comfort and student motivation in Finland’s schools are surprisingly low,
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even by international standards, although the trend is upwards (Internation-al WHO student survey, Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children [HBSC] [started in 1982]; Harinen & Halme 2012). This slight conflict is a good reason to examine the contribution of school buildings to school comfort and study motivation.
The dissertation that is summarised here approaches the subject through the following questions:
How do the users observe and experience the facilities in their school buildings and what kinds of spaces and things are consid-ered positive?
What can be concluded about the usability of school buildings that are designed according to contemporary pedagogic views, as learn-ing environments operating according to modern objectives?
This article discusses the questions based on of school building users’ experi-ences, gathered from the dissertation results.
School building facilities have traditionally been divided into teaching facili-ties, sports facilities, dining facilities, library facilities, student care facilities, administration facilities, transport facilities, and maintenance facilities. The di-vision is appropriate, but the places of learning could be divided in other ways, for instance based on different views on learning or ways of teaching.
Different views on learning highlight different aspects of learning and conditions for learning. A report from Finland’s National Fore-sight Network brings out the following views on learning in context with learning facilities (Oppimisen muuttuva maasto 2008):
Cognitive learning theory: the mind’s ability to construct concepts and knowledge (”I am thinking”);
Functional learning theory: learning by doing, tacit knowledge, per-son (”I am doing”);
Social learning theory: thinking together, learning in communities, social media (”we are thinking”, ”we are learning”).
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The joint InnoSchool project by the Aalto University and Helsinki University examines the connections of formal and informal ways of teaching and cor-responding learning environments (Krokfors, Kangas, Vitikka, Mylläri, 2010). This expands the concept of a learning environment outside of the classroom and school building, into the surrounding society and, through virtual learning environments, even to the whole world.
According to Barrett, Zhang, Moffatt and Kobbacy (2013), the architectural quality of a learning environment improves learning results by as much as 25% and similarly a lack of quality deteriorates the results by 25%. Nuikkinen (2005, 68, 69) emphasises the importance of experiencing the environment compre-hensively, with all senses and the body. Aesthetics are more than simple visual observation; subconscious and bodily effects have a significant role in the way spaces are experienced. (See also Nyman 2008.)
Based on these facts, the division of learning spaces could be as follows: Places of teaching (general teaching facility, group work space), places of do-ing (workshops, kitchens, subject classrooms), places of information retrieval (library, media library), places of encountering (lobbies, dining halls, traffic junctions, library), places of retreat (libraries, peaceful corners). The division is not fixed – one place can have several roles and contain several possibili-ties. At best, even a teaching space that is equipped in a very subject-specific way can be used according to various views and ways of learning. Learning environments should also be of a high aesthetical quality. This improves the users’ appreciation towards their school and reflects the society’s appreciation towards the school institution and its users.
the grammar of a school building – background information for the studyThe basis of this grammar includes the “metaphors” of the Norwegian architect Cold (2002b), the concept pair “formal – informal” (Krokfors et al. 2010) and the criteria for a quality school by the Finnish Nuikkinen (2005, 2009).
metaphorsThe Norwegian architect Cold has sought out real spaces and rooms as models for functional, stimulating and beautiful environments. The spaces, or meta-phors, that she has chosen, invoke images of spaces that could be found in ev-ery school (Cold 2002a). Her metaphors with their examples are a greenhouse
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(Kew Gardens, London), a street (Ålborg, Denmark), a bazaar (Ascoli Picino, Italy) and an exhibition hall (Covent Garden, London).
The greenhouse invokes visions of retreat, peace, recharging, nature, beauty, meditation and being alone.
The street is the greenhouse’s polar opposite: the nature of the street involves going from one place to another, people, encoun-ters, stimuli, bustle and social activity.
Above all, the bazaar reflects recourses, doing, action and invent-ing. The bazaar is also connected with social activities and col-laboration.
The exhibition hall reflects versatile activities. The nature of the space changes according to the activities and includes the con-cepts of modifiability, flexibility and versatility. Doing is social co-operation.
formal – informalStudents are learning more and more information and skills in coincidental everyday situations in environments outside of the school. Utilising this eve-ryday learning in schools is described by the concept pair “formal – informal” (Krokfors et al. 2010).
Traditional school learning, where the teacher provides the students with in-formation in a classroom is formal learning in a formal environment. Informal learning in an informal environment is spontaneous learning in unstructured situations outside of the school building. Informal learning can also happen in a formal environment, in the school building. This can be promoted through design by planning spaces for coincidental encounters and informal activities.
Quality criteriaThe demands of a physical learning environment and the implementation of these demands through construction are presented in the criteria for a high-quality school, formatted by doctor and architect Nuikkinen together with the Finnish National Board of Education (Nuikkinen 2005 and 2009, 94). The crite-ria are based on the 2004 national core curriculum for basic education (Finn-ish National Board of Education 2004) and thus can be regarded as normative quality requirements. There are seven criteria, which are as follows:
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A high-quality school building:1) functions flexibly and diversely, leaving room for versatile
ways of working and interaction situations 2) functions as a versatile centre of action and culture for its
environment3) is an inspiring, concrete learning aid which induces to-
wards creativity and progressive inquiry and supports situ-ational learning
4) is aesthetically pleasing and improves physical and social wellbeing
5) fosters sustainable development6) is functionally dimensioned7) increases physical health and safety.
The criteria are meant to be used as tools in defining and examining objec-tives in school building projects for basic education. Each criterion works on its own but together they form an ensemble that caters to various views of the architectural field. They also overlap so that when one criterion is fulfilled, many other criteria may be fulfilled at the same time.
summary of the GrammarAccording to Cold, a school should include places for using one’s hands, us-ing the brain, performing, encountering (community) and calming oneself (solitude). The most important features of the quality criteria are openness, flexibility, diversity and modifiability as well as interaction (see also Mäkitalo-Siegl, Zottman, Kaplan & Fischer 2010). Flexibility and interaction are also highlighted by Kuusikorpi (2012) and Sahlberg (2011). The main types of school facilities can be adjusted to fit the modern requirements: places for do-ing, places for information, places for encounters and places for retreat.Some places can manifest the features of several space types. One of these is the library. It is primarily a space for information, but also a space for doing, encountering and retreat.
research material collection methodThe research material originally included 18 schools located around Finland. The schools include basic education schools, high schools and combina-
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tions of the two, and the numbers of students vary. The research is limited to schools that were built between 2000 and 2005, which means that the users have a few years’ experience of the building, and the buildings correspond to the pedagogic requirements and architectural ideals that have prevailed since the 1970s basic education reform until today. This article presents the results from ten schools.
The collection method for the systematic user material was a guided tour, a walkthrough. A walkthrough is a method of environmental psychology, which has been used also in post-occupancy evaluation, POE (Preiser, Rabinovitz & White 1988; Kyttä 2001). In Nordic Countries, the method has mainly been used in residential area evaluation (deLaval 1997), but Cold has also evaluated school buildings by using this method, e.g. Botby Högstadium in Helsinki, Finland (Cold 2002a).
The walkthrough includes an on-site group walk and a discussion afterwards. For this study, a group including various user types was selected from each school, and 10 to 13 pre-selected places were walked through in each school building. The groups were meant to represent the main users of the school building in order to acquire as diverse an evaluation material as possible, in-cluding various different views. The evaluated school facilities were selected so that they included spaces for doing, information, encountering and retreat. A test walkthrough showed that the number of places should be ten, or thir-teen at the most, in order to maintain the participants’ alertness.
The walkthrough itself was carried out during the school day, at a suitable mo-ment for the school. Before the walkthrough the participants were provided with brief guidance on what was meant to be done and what kinds of things could be noted. The aim was to observe concrete things with free and spon-taneous notions and feelings. The walkthrough was guided, and the group stopped in each place for five minutes at the most, when each participant recorded their impressions on a notepad. The participants were asked not to talk to each other during the walkthrough and to concentrate only on their own observations.
After the walkthrough, there was a one-hour discussion, which was guided but informal. Then purpose of the after-discussion was to receive viewpoints which would complement the written material. The participants were able to elaborate on the points they had made and things they had thought of after-wards, perhaps based on the opinions of others.
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the method of analysis
Here are some terms used in the analysis of the material:Place: walkthrough observation place of which the users wrote down their observations.Sentence: observation written down by the user in the place.Opinion: opinion/s present in the sentence, an elementary unit of the analysis.Quality: a positive, negative or neutral value in the opinion.Characteristic: subject and grading unit of the sentences (for instance light-ning, acoustics, narrowness).The users’ observations provided both written and recorded material. In the material, the observers’ sentences were freely presented and not fitted into a systematic, pre-provided structure. The method of analysis was classification and interpretation.
The observations, or sentences, written down by the users include statements, or opinions, about quality, which were organised in two ways: by values and by characteristics. In value division, each opinion was interpreted as having ei-ther a positive, negative or neutral value. The latter was only given if it was im-possible to conclude a positive or negative value or if the sentence was clearly declaratory. The opinions were also graded according to which subject, or characteristic, they touched upon. The characteristics were defined according to the criteria for a theoretically good basic education school, presented earlier (Nuikkinen 2009). From the criterion, 19 more specific, relevant characteristics were formed. The characteristics include factors related to the functionality, comfort and durability of the facilities.
Characteristics related to functionality are: 1) versatility, modifiability and flex-ibility; 2) spaciousness or tightness; 3) functionality, use, usability; 4) transpar-ency, views; 5) healthiness, safety; 6) furniture, fittings, equipment.Characteristics related to comfort are: 1) light and lighting; 2) sound and acoustics; 3) scents, temperature and room air; 4) space and space volume; 5) colours, textures and surfaces; 6) aesthetics and art; 7) atmosphere and moods; 8) tidiness.Characteristics related to durability are: 1) building techniques; 2) teaching tech-nology; 3) building; 4) building elements; 5) upkeep, maintenance, cleaning.
The analysis phase included 20 different place types from all observation plac-es, representing the places for doing, information, encountering, and retreat.The users’ opinions were approached from the viewpoints of both the char-acteristics and places in two ways: 1) the order of characteristics and places according to the total number of opinions (rate of interest), 2) the order of
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characteristics and places according to the positivity of the opinions (rate of positivity). The rate of interest shows which characteristics and places the users quantitatively focused on, i.e. which characteristics and places aroused feelings and which did not. The rate of positivity shows the characteristics and places towards which the users felt positive or less positive. The classification of the opinions is demonstrated in Table 1.
resultsThe sample originally included 5,176 opinions. The characteristics which re-ceived the least attention and special, school-specific spaces were left out of the examination in order to get a more reliable picture. After the elimination, there were 4,815 opinions.
Most of the characteristic-related opinions have to do with comfort (46%) and functionality (51%). The portion of durability-related opinions is marginal, only 3%. Of the comfort-related opinions 64% were positive, 33% were nega-tive and 3% were neutral. In the functionality category, 58% of opinions were positive, 39% were negative and 3% were neutral. Of the durability-related opinions 80% were negative, 16% were positive and the remaining 4% were neutral. This seems to reflect the principle according to which when things are going well, they do not receive a lot of attention.
The examination only takes into account the characteristics which received at least 50 opinions. Those under the limit were all related to durability.
characteristicsNumerically, most opinions (the rate of interest of characteristics, Figure 1) were given about the characteristics “functionality, use, usability”, the second most about “dimensioning, spaciousness, narrowness” and the third most about
Table 1. The classification principle of the users’ opinions
the number of all opinions the number of positive opinions
characteristics the rates of interest of characteristics
figure 1 the rates of positivity of characteristics
figure 2
places the rates of interest of places
figure 3 the rates of positivity of places
figure 4
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FIGURE 2. The rates of positivity of characteristics, % of all opinions given about each characteristic
17,8629,34
41,341,4342,21
49,0458,39
61,3562,25
65,8173,26
76,8278,59
81,8286,56
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Building components:Acoustics, noise:
Cleanliness:Inside climate:Dimensioning:
Healthiness, safety:Functionality, usability:Furniture, equipments:Col, texture, surfaces:
Esthetics, art:Atmosphere:
Transparency:Light, lighting:
Flexibility, multi funct :Spaces, volumes, forms:
FIGURE 1. The rates of interest of characteristics, % of all given opinions
1,122,08
3,13,68
4,24,34,32
4,845,06
7,089,06
10,6212,7812,84
14,9
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Building components:Healthiness, safety:
Esthetics, art:Cleanliness:
Inside climate:Transparency:
Flexibility, multi funct :Acoustics, noise:
Spaces, volumes, forms:Col, texture, surfaces:
Light, lighting:Atmosphere:
Furniture, equipments:Dimensioning:
Functionality, usability:
Figure 1. The rates of interest of characteristics, % of all given opinions
Figure 2. The rates of positivity of characteristics, % of all opinions given about each characteristic
“furniture, fittings, equipment”. The least interesting characteristics were: “the quality and condition of the building elements” (the least amount of opinions), “healthiness and safety” and “general aesthetics and art”. The most positive opinions (the rate of positivity of characteristics, Figure 2) were in the cate-
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gories “space, volume, form”, “modifiability, flexibility, versatility” and “light, lightning”. The least positive feelings were aroused by “the quality and condi-tion of building elements” (the lowest amount of positive opinions), “sounds, acoustics” and “tidiness”.
PlacesThe rates of interest for different places are shown in Figure 3, where the places are organised according to the number of opinions written about them. In Figure 4, the places are organised according to the number of positive opinions.
Table 2 presents a summary of selected place types with their rates of inter-est and positivity as in Figures 3 and 4. The table also shows the place type’s position in the figure. When the rates of positivity and interest were high, the users were interested in the place and felt positive towards it. In the same way, interest may be high but the experiences less positive. In extreme cases, the place excites neither interest nor positive feelings.
FIGURE 3. The rates of interest of places, % of all given opinions
1,21,29
1,522,39
3,574,24,2
4,424,53
4,84,86
5,175,28
6,137,067,19
7,527,837,93
8,93
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Teachers workspace:Team work room - KIVA:Circulation area – KIVA:
Ict:Cluster foyer - KIVA:
Auditorium:Visual arts:
Physics, chem, nat-sc:Student welfare:
Home economics:Lobby hall – KIVA:
Entrance hall:Music:
Textile crafts:Personnel cafeteria:
Basic classroom:Technical crafts:
Dining hall:Library:
Sports hall:
Figure 3. The rates of interest of places, % of all given opinions
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The results are averages and generalisations, which is why school-specific individual cases have also been examined in order to eliminate possible dis-tortion caused by the generalisation. The places which had the highest rate of interest, i.e. the places which aroused the most feelings (Figure 3) were the gym, library and dining hall. The lowest number of opinions was produced by the teachers’ working area, separate group work area, and informal lounges and workspaces connected with hall-ways.
The most positive places (Figure 4) were the teaching facilities for crafts, arts and home economics. The least positive were the facilities for information and communication technology, separate group work areas, and class corridors.
When examining the school-specific individual cases, the most positive place was the crafts room (94%), the next, natural sciences (91%) and music (90%) teaching facilities. The most negative individual cases were class corridors, separate group work areas and general teaching facilities.
FIGURE 4. The rates of positivity of places, % of opinions given in each place
27,8330,65
38,9545,8746,58
54,4656,2356,36
57,5957,83
59,3960,4760,68
65,5266,34
68,2468,569,2670,3
73,56
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Ict:Team work room - KIVA:
Cluster foyer - KIVA:Student welfare:
Circulation area – KIVA: Physics, chem, nat-sc:
Dining hall:Basic classroom:
Library:Entrance hall:
Technical crafts:Sports hall:
Lobby hall – KIVA: Teachers workspace:
Auditorium:Personnel cafeteria:
Music:Home economics:
Visual arts:Textile crafts:
Figure 4. The rates of positivity of places, % of opinions given in each place
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The more specific examination includes examples of four place types: the places of doing, encountering, information, and retreat. These are: 1) the crafts teaching facility as the most positive place (a place of doing), 2) the gener-al teaching facility as an elementary unit of the school building (a place of studying and doing), 3) the library as an important core area which could simultaneously be a place of information, retreat and encountering, 3) the in-formal lounge / workspace which could be, depending on the case, a place of encountering or retreat, and sometimes also a place of doing.
a Place of doing / the crafts teaching facilityOf all the places in the study, the crafts teaching facility was felt to be the most positive, while its rate of interest was average (Figure 2). The most pos-itive characteristics of the place were “atmosphere, mood”, “light, lighting” and “modifiability, flexibility, versatility”. The least positive characteristics were “sound, acoustics”, “room air, scents, smells, temperatures” and “colour, tex-ture, surfaces”.
As a school-specific individual case, the greatest positivity rate of a crafts teaching facility was 93.9% (Table 2). Every user mentioned light, and many mentioned breadth or spaciousness as a positive characteristic. “Comfortable, nice, functional” were frequent words, and there were no negative opinions. The lowest positivity rate for a crafts teaching facility was 51.4% (Table 2). Lightness as a positive characteristic was mentioned by five users, soundproof-ing as a negative characteristic by three (the dining hall is next to the room). One user felt that the scents coming from the dining hall were a positive factor. The space is versatile, also used for teaching music, which was seen as a pos-itive by one user and as a negative by one. The opinions were generally split – one felt the colours were cheerful while another felt they were depressing.
a Place of doing and studying / General teaching facilityThe general teaching facility had an average positivity rate, but by rate of in-terest it placed fifth in the total ranking (Table 2).
For general teaching facilities, the highest school-specific positivity rate was 78.95%. Nearly all users mentioned light as a positive characteristic. Large windows and nice views were also seen as positive. A large couch in the classroom and student’s works on display were frequent positive opinions. A frequent negative opinion was the lack of cabinet space.
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The lowest school-specific positivity rate for a general teaching facility was 12.5%. Tightness of space was a negative characteristic mentioned by all users. Some mentioned this several times. Stale air was mentioned by three users. The only positive opinion regarded the door between the classrooms.
a Place of information / libraryThe rate of interest for libraries was high, and as a place the library was the sec-ond most interesting. By positivity rate, the library was average (Table 2). The most positive opinions regarded ”modifiability, flexibility, versatility”, ”trans-parency and views”, ”light, lighting” and ”space, volume and form”. The least positive were “sound, acoustics”, “functionality, use, usability” and “dimension-ing, spaciousness, tightness”. The highest positivity rate for a school-specific library was 86.2%. Internal views and transparencies were mentioned by most users as a positive, and noise as a negative. The place was felt to be comfort-able and the furniture was well-liked. The lowest school-specific positivity rate for a library was 20.9%. Noise and traffic were felt to be disturbing in nearly every user’s sentences. Student users also did not like usage restrictions during breaks. The lightness and height of the space were considered positive.
Places of encountering / informal lounges or Workspaces Places of encountering were divided into four types: the informal places – formed intentionally or unintentionally – in context with general lounges, class corridors and hallways. They also included group work areas in hallway ex-tensions, which could be used freely. These places did not really interest the users, and they were not felt to be very positive, with some school-specific exceptions. (Table 2.)
In the examination of school-specific individual cases, the greatest positivity rate was 88.89%. The place was a lounge area within a lobby. Positive char-acteristics were lightness, colours, spaciousness, views and furniture, among others. The sound environment was not felt to be negative despite the location in a traffic junction.
The lowest school-specific positivity rate was 9.89%. The place was a group work area in a hallway extension. The low positivity rate is partly explained by the fact that public computers were temporarily removed from the place due to vandalism. The place was considered untidy, narrow, restless, drab and dull-coloured.
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modern school building, discussion GeneralIn general examination of the sentences, two notions could be made: func-tionality- related characteristics produced more opinions than comfort-related characteristics, but comfort-related opinions were more positive than function-ality-related opinions. Perhaps the more concrete functionality-related matters are easier to notice, especially if there is something wrong. Environmental ob-servation may also require experience. The interview material included state-ments along these lines: ”I only now realised how fine a school we have.” Or: “I have never noticed that skylight before.” It was also shown that the pupils’ ability to evaluate their environment should not be underestimated.
Places of doing, WorkshopThe bazaar in Cold’s metaphors is represented by a workshop. The workshop also includes some characteristics of the exhibition hall as a versatile place. According to user observations, the three most positive places were places of
Table 2. The rates of interest and positivity of selected spaces
the
rate
s of i
nter
est
% of
all
given
opin
ions
(from
figu
re 3
)
the
rank
ing in
the
figur
e 3
the
rate
s of p
ositi
vity
% of
opin
ions g
iven
in ea
ch
place
(from
figu
re 4
)
the
rank
ing in
the
figur
e 4
the
mos
t pos
itive
sin
gle
case
% of
opin
ions g
iven
in th
e
place
the
least
posit
ive
singl
e ca
se%
of o
pinion
s give
n in
the
pla
ce
Places for doingTextile crafts 6,13 % 7/20 73,56 % 1/20 93,94 % 51,43 % Visual arts 4,20 % 14/20 70,30 % 2/20 80,00 % 52,38 % Home economics 4,8 % 11/20 69,26 % 3/20 88,89 % 48,39 % Basic classroom 7,19 % 5/20 56,36 % 13/20 78,95 % 14,29 %
Places for knowledgeLibrary 7,93 % 2/20 57,59 % 12/20 85,19 % 20,93 %
KIVA placesCirculation area – KIVA 1,52 % 18/20 46,58 % 16/20 54,84 % Team work room - KIVA 1,29 % 19/20 30,65 % 19/20 64,00 % 9,68 % Cluster foyer – KIVA 3,57 % 16/20 38,95 % 18/20 62,96 % 21,62 % Lobby hall – KIVA 4,86 % 10/20 60,68 % 8/20 88,89 % 54,61 % KIVA total 11,24 % 44,22 % b
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doing: the teaching facilities for crafts, arts and home economics. The places were generally felt to be spacious, roomy, well-lit and flexible. First and fore-most the moods and atmosphere were considered a remarkably positive char-acteristic. The general teaching facility, which is also partly a place of doing, was not felt to be as positive, but based on the relatively high rate of interest, it aroused feelings. In the places of doing, a clearly negative characteristic was the sound environment, i.e. acoustics and soundproofing. However, this did not hamper the atmosphere and mood in the most positive places of doing.
The quality of architecture does not explain all of the high positivity rates, because the rates were high throughout, regardless of the architectural quality, at the very least close to 50%. The nature of the subjects is “learning by doing” and co-operation. Things are created with the appropriate tools and methods using tangible materials. The teacher’s role in these subjects is more of a guid-ing one, and most students receive personal attention in the form of guidance and feedback. The work is often group work, and even individual work is done together. The atmosphere is positive enough to overlook disturbing fac-tors such as the sound environment.
Figure 5. The workshop requires desks and plenty of storage space
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This observation supports the modern objectives of the integrating of subjects and the ideal of collaboration. A new, modern teaching facility type could be a more workshop-like space where multidisciplinary and multi-art form projects are carried out. The workshop is also suggested as a modern space type by Nuikkinen (2005, 89), with an aim to increase its utilisation rate. In this model, the spaces of one subject classroom and one general teaching facility would
Figure 6. Textile classroom, a place of doing, which can be a versatile workshop
Figure 7. The project space is a large desk where the model developing as a result of the project is kept
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be combined so that instead there would be two workshops. This would be implemented by equipping the spaces not only with the subject classroom’s special equipment but also the equipment of a versatile workshop. Multi-sub-ject projects also require a space where the joint project at hand can be carried out and stored while incomplete. The minimum requirements are large desks and larger-than-average storage facilities (Figure 5).
an example of a multi-subject project work (Figure 7)Teachers have integrated the subjects of Finnish, history, arts, crafts and math-ematics, to which this project work is connected. The project work includes a collaborative miniature model of a building where each student has a room of their own. The students present the class with a personal plan drafted accord-ing to a certain style epoch, after which they design and make the furniture and textiles for their rooms. Plans with perspective sketches are drawn about the rooms. The rooms include self-made light fittings and electricity. In the Christmas celebration, the lights are turned on and the guests can admire the students’ work.
The skeleton of the building is on a large desk at the back of the classroom. During their spare time, the students can make small additions to the model. It has been agreed with the cleaning staff that the “construction site” will not be touched. The example is from the Pispa School in Tampere, Finland. The students are 11-year-olds, in the fifth grade.
a Place of information, the libraryThe library is a place for storing, sharing and retrieving information. It is also a place of retreat and encountering; as a metaphor, a combination of the green-house and the bazaar. The concept of a library is misleading and originated in a time when information was contained in books. The library of a modern school includes, in addition to books, all the resources related to knowledge. At best, the library is located in the school’s core area and open at all times when there is activity at the school. This makes it easily accessible, and the threshold of using the library is low. The aim is also to have an aesthetically pleasing, inspiring and functional learning environment which enables infor-mation management and learning. The library’s role as a place of information, encountering and retreat sets requirements regarding flexibility and versatility.
In research results, the library’s rate of interest is high and its positivity rate average, but in school-specific individual cases the extremes are far apart. The opinions are either very positive or not positive at all. The library is
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Figure 8. The library is a place of knowledge, encountering and doing
Figure 9. The library is in the school´s core area
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considered an important and interesting place, and people want to use it if possible. Qualitative weaknesses or restricted usage possibilities produce a lot of negative feedback. In contemporary schools, many libraries do not fulfil the modern school’s objectives because of space restrictions or an operational culture which does not utilise the possibilities provided by the physical environment. The operational culture is relatively easy to change, but space restrictions are difficult to correct, as they demand larger resources.
Kiva as a Place of encounteringPlaces of encountering, represented by the street in Cold’s metaphors, are lo-cated in public areas, traffic junctions, stairways, lobbies and hallways (Figure 10). This article uses the concept of a KIVA place to describe a place of en-countering in a public area, which is clearly visible either because of its space or its fittings.
The word “KIVA” originally means the round, partly underground ceremonial rooms built by the Pueblo people. The word is supposedly also present in the Inuit language, and there is no exact translation for it. The term has been used by the Canadian architect Greg Hasiuk in the schools he has designed in the arctic Nunavut, in the northernmost territory of Canada (ZoomInfo 2007). The school buildings designed by him include a central, circular, amphitheatre-like gathering place connected to the traffic areas. Here as well, the KIVA is a place for encountering. The functional content, however, is broader than in the Inuit schools. The KIVA place caters for all forms of communication from loung-ing to studying. KIVA is not very large, but it does not need to be very small, either. It is a meeting place, but not necessarily a very central one. The most important aspect is that the place is semi-public, easily accessible and comfort-able. It provides an opportunity for social interaction and studying. It can also be a place of retreat, either in connection with other activities or separately.
The research included four different types of KIVA places depending on the location: bounded areas for other use either in the general lobby, in the class corridor, in the hallway, or linked to these. The fourth type is a special group work area linked to the above-mentioned areas. Generally, the rates of pos-itivity and interest for these places were not particularly high, but the best individual cases received a lot of interest and positivity. This implies that the areas do not receive enough focus, that or there are no KIVA places in the school building at all. At worst, provided opportunities have not been utilised. On the other hand, in the individual cases which were felt to be positive, the places were furnished comfortably and used for retreat, encountering and studying. The users can regard even modest places as positive, as long as the
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Figure 10. KIVA place, a comfortable place of encountering in a central area of the school
Figure 11. KIVA place can also be in the dining area
basic requirements for comfort are met. A KIVA place can be created without significant financial efforts but it requires a desire in the operational culture (Figures 11, 12).
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Figure 12. KIVA place can simply be located at the end of a hallway
summaryThe most disturbing characteristics for the users of school buildings are tight-ness of space and problematic sound environments. Tightness of space is a special problem for general teaching facilities. Places that are uncomfortable because of tightness of space have either been designed to be too small, or there is a greater number of people using them than planned. Tightness of space also affects versatility; many ways of teaching are impossible with too large a student group. Bad room acoustics and soundproofing impairs the per-formance of all users. The ability to concentrate is lowered, and teachers are shown to experience voice problems (Sala 2012). More positive characteristics include lightness, functionality, scents, comfort and cosiness. This speaks of a longing for homeliness (cf. Piispanen 2008).
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The basics of space planning in a modern school building are shaped by changing pedagogic foundations. Based on the “way and place of teaching” thinking highlighted by the InnoSchool project (Krokfors et al. 2010) and the previously discussed pedagogic views, places that support versatile and social activities and places outside of traditional classrooms will become more sig-nificant. These places include workshops, versatile subject classrooms, librar-ies, dining halls and the KIVA spaces. Based on these results, places where learning equals doing - both together and alone - motivate users and are felt to be comfortable even in the current situation. This is a good foundation for developing spaces according to the modern school’s workshop-based think-ing. School libraries and KIVA places do not generally meet the aims of the contemporary school. Based on the findings, these are interesting places, and the users would like to utilise them more than the current situation allows.
The results show that physical environment affects our learning, wellbeing and comfort, but in the end it is the operational culture which creates the school’s atmosphere. The intentional and unintentional effects of architecture, as well as the building’s “soul”, are refined and shaped through the building’s use. A good building promotes the development of that soul. A good building can be produced, if the aims of the various parties involved in the project are parallel and the different views are able to feed each other. This allows the parties to speak the same language, and their grammar is also the same.
referencesCold, B. 2002a. Skoleanlegget som lesebok, en studie av skoleanlegget som estetisk ramme for laering og velvaere - Delprosjekt: “Gåtur” på en finsk ungdomskole. [A school building as a textbook. A study of the school building as an aesthetic framework for learning and wellbeing – Subprojekt: “Walkthrough” in a Finnish Secondary School] Project in the pro-gram of The Research Council of Norway: Evaluering av Reform 97. [Evaluation of Reform 97]. Trondheim: NTNU, Department of Architectural Design and Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Cold, B. 2002b. Skolemiljö, fire fortellinger. [School Environment, Four Stories] Oslo: Kommuneforlaget AS.
Finnish National Board of Education. 2012. OPS 2016 - Esi- ja perusopetuksen opetussuun-nitelman perusteiden uudistaminen. [The Proposal of Finnish National Curriculum 2016]. Retrieved Dec 10th 2012, from http://www.oph.fi/ops2016/perusteluonnokset.
Harinen, P. & Halme J. 2012. Hyvä, paha koulu - kouluhyvinvointia hakemassa. [Good school, bad school - looking for well-being of the school]. UNICEF Finland. Ministry of Education and Culture. The Finnish Youth Research Society. Helsinki: Unigrafia. (Summary in English from http://www.nuorisotutkimusseura.fi/julkaisuja/Hyva_paha_koulu.pdf)
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Hautamäki, A. (Ed.). 2008. Oppimisen muuttuva maasto. Taloudellisesta taantumasta nou-suun oppimista kehittämällä. [The changing field of learning. Out of the economic down-turn by developing education]. Kansallisen ennakointiverkoston oppiminen ja koulutus tulevaisuustyöryhmän raportti. [The Report of the National Foresight Network]. Helsinki. Retrieved May 20th 2011, from http://www.foresight.fi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Oppi-misen-muuttuva-maasto-Taloudellisesta-taantumasta-nousuun-oppimista-kehittamalla.pdf
Kuuskorpi, M. 2012. Tulevaisuuden fyysinen oppimisympäristö. Käyttäjälähtöinen muun-neltava ja joustava opetustila. [Future Physical Learning Environment. User Oriented, Flex-ible and Changeable Teaching Spaces.] Dissertation. University of Turku. Department of Teacher Education.
Kyttä, M. & Kaaja, M. (Ed.). 2001. Vuorovaikutteisen suunnittelun ja ympäristön tutkimuk-sen metodipaketti. [Interactive planning and environment research, method package]. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelun tutkimus- ja koulutuskeskus ytk. [YTK Land Use Planning and Urban Studies Group, Aalto University]. Retrieved Sep. 9th 2011, from <http://www.tkk.fi/Yksikot/YTK/koulutus/metodikortti/metodikortit.pdf >
de Laval, S. 1997. Planerare och boende i dialog. Metoder för utvärdering. [Planners and residents in dialogue. Methods for evaluation]. Dissertation. KTH Royal Institute of Tech-nology: School of Architecture and the Built Environment.
Mäkitalo-Siegl, K., Zottman, J., Kaplan, F. & Fischer F. 2010. Classroom of the Future. Orchestrating Collaborative Spaces. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
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Nuikkinen, K. 2009. Koulurakennus ja hyvinvointi. Teoriaa ja käyttäjän kokemuksia perus-kouluarkkitehtuurista. [The school building and well-being. Theory and users´ experiences of the comprehensive school architecture.] Dissertation. University of Tampere, Depart-ment of Education.
Nyman, K. 2008. Arkkitehtuurin kadotettu kieli. [The lost language of architecure]. Vantaa: Multikustannus. Erottaja-sarja.
Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet 2004. [Finnish National Curriculum 2004]. Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education.
Piispanen, M. 2008. Hyvä oppimisympäristö. Oppilaiden vanhempien ja opettajien hyvyys-käsitysten kohtaaminen. [Good Learning Environment. Perceptions of Good Quality in Comprehensive School by Pupils, Parents and Teachers.] Doctoral Thesis in Pedagogics. University of Jyväskylä. Faculty of Pedagogics. Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius.
Preiser, W.F.E., Rabinovitz, H.Z. & White, E.T. 1988. Post-Occupancy Evaluation. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Prime Minister´s Office Finland. 2011. Programme of Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen´s Gov-ernment. Programme of the Finnish Government. 22 June 2011. Retrieved Dec 10th 2012, from http://valtioneuvosto.fi/hallitus/hallitusohjelma/pdf/en334743.pdf
Sahlberg, P. 2011. Finnish Lessons. What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Sala, E. & Rantala, L. M. 2012. Opetustilojen akustiikka ja ääniergonomia - tutkimuksesta toteutukseen. Loppuraportti. [Acoustics and voice ergonomics from study to practice. Final report]. Turku: The Hospital District of Southwest Finland. The Finnish Work Environment Fund (TSR), project nr 109292. (Abstract in English from http://www.tsr.fi/tutkimustietoa/tata-on-tutkittu/hanke/?h=109292&n=aineisto).
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Krokfors L, Kangas M, Vitikka E & Mylläri J. 2010. Näkökulmia tulevaisuuden koulu-pedagogiikkaan [Perspectives on the future of school pedagogy]. In Smeds R, Krokfors L, Ruokamo H & Staffans A (ed.), InnoSchool – välittävä koulu – oppimisen verkostot, ympäristöt ja pedagogiikka. [InnoSchool – the caring school – learnig networks, environ-ments and pedagogy]. Espoo: Aalto University, School of Science, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management. SimLab Report Series 31.
Vitikka, E. 2009. Opetussuunnitelman mallin jäsennys – sisältö ja pedagogiikka kokonai-suuden rakentajina. [Structuring of the Curriculum Design: Content and Pedagogy Con-structing the Whole.] Dissertation. University of Helsinki, Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, Department of Applied Sciences of Education.
Zoominfo. 2007. Number TEN speaks at the Council of Educational Facility Planners In-ternational, July 2007. School Design in the Far North, Lessons for the South. Case Study: Arviat High School in Nunavut, Canada. Retrieved Jan 11th 2013, from http://www.zoom-info.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=-2029692624&page_url=//www.numberten.com/news/s2.html&page_last_updated=2008-01-03T12:15:47&firstName=Greg&lastName=Hasiuk.
All photos © Krisse Sulonen
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Anne Malin & Päivi Palojoki
multi-voiced planning for redesigning home economics classrooms
introductionThis article is a part of a research project which aims to develop home eco-nomics classrooms so as to make them flexible and versatile learning en-vironments where household activities might be practiced according to the curriculum in different social networking situations. The results of this project are published in Malin´s (2011) doctoral dissertation. The research used a so-cio-cultural approach where the functionality of the learning environment was studied specifically from an interactive learning perspective. The social frame-work is a natural starting point in home economics teaching because it partic-ularly lends itself to group work in classrooms. The social nature of learning thus becomes a significant part of the learning process. We see learning in home economics classrooms as experience-based, holistic and context-bound. The learning environment, i.e., home economics classrooms and the material tools to be found there, play a significant role in developing students’ skills for managing their everyday life.
The criteria developed and tested here originated from two separate schools where activities during lessons were video-recorded both before and after the classrooms were renovated (Malin 2011). An analysis of both environments based on the video recordings was conducted. In the study (Malin 2011) the criteria for functional home economics classrooms were formulated. They in-clude technical (health, safety and technical factors), functional (ergonomic, ecological, aesthetic and economic factors) and behavioral (cooperation and interaction skills and communication technologies) criteria. While designing these criteria, the focus was on both the learning environment and the stu-dents’ activities during lessons.
In this article, we give examples how different professionals (commissioners, planners and teachers) use these criteria and pictures and lay-outs from the two schools as a tool for planning new home economics classrooms. The aim of this paper is to discuss the following questions:
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a) What kind of new demands pose a challenge for the planning of home economics learning environments?
b) What kind of multi-voiced planning occurs in the home economics classroom planning process?
demands for a novel learning environment in schoolsFunctional and productive skills change as society and the context of everyday activities change. Skills are more and more seen as context-dependent. This challenges the conception of learning environments. As Rauste–von Wright and von Wright (1994, 127) note, learning and the ability to learn should be seen more as part of society. The Finnish Board of Education (Finnish National Curriculum 2004, 16) has also emphasized learning as a tool for understand-ing the contemporary culture and culture-bound meanings. The better schools follow the demands of our changing society, the better tools the students are able to participate in societal activities (see also Kuusikorpi 2012). Regarding home economics education, Kivilehto (2011) has demonstrated the value of applying science teaching methods aimed at deep-level learning and cogni-tive enhancement. These kinds of new methods are highly dependent on the flexibility of the physical learning environment.
The curriculum of Finnish comprehensive schools (Finnish National Curricu-lum 2004) aims to develop students´ personalities in their entirety, rather than simply increase their cognitive abilities. This holistic view is also important regarding learning activities in home economics classrooms. The student is comprehended as an active and responsible participant who interprets new knowledge on the basis of the previous knowledge and experience. This constructivistic process is based on cooperation with the teacher and other students.
Another requirement of National Curriculum is interdisciplinary cooperation between school subjects (Finnish National Curriculum 2004). Modern ICT technology should also utilize (see also Kuusikorpi 2012). These novel tools open up new possibilities for experimentation, research and experience. This demand also relates the notion of the learning environment. A good learning environment needs up-to-date learning materials and tools for accessing infor-mation outside the classroom (The Finnish Comprehensive School Act 1998, 29 §; Finnish National Curriculum 2004, 8–10).
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The school building itself is an essential constituent of the learning environ-ment. In Finland the functionality of school buildings emerged as an area of pedagogical research as early as the 1970’s. The process of learning was seen as being dependent on classrooms and their facilities (Mikkola 1974). How-ever, the simultaneous development of classrooms and learning activities was viewed as problematic because, even then, cooperation between the builders of the school buildings and their users was poor. Due to the lack of this kind of cooperation, innovative solutions in school buildings were extremely rare. However, new ideologies emerged, at the turn of the new millennium. In Ta-ble 1 we summarize how the different conceptions of learning as well as new pedagogical ideologies have affected the design and architecture of school buildings (see also: Nuikkinen 2005, 61–66; Piispanen 2008, 119.)
In 2001 OECD-countries jointly established a program for developing school buildings (2001): the Programme on Educational Building (PED). In this pro-gram the building of schools and the development of the physical school en-vironment was seen as one of the corner stones for high-quality teaching and learning in schools. The program studied how investments in the building of schools could be best used to support the pedagogical and societal changes in the local environment. Based on this work the OECD developed a set of recommendations (2001) which proposed school buildings should be able to adapt to the needs of the future and not only react to contemporary chal-lenges, the school buildings itself should also support the learning process and encourage innovations from students and teachers and, to conclude, a well planned school should encourage the students´ involvement in participatory learning. (OECD 2001, xii.) The challenges set by the local environment are important. The schools of today operate in close cooperation with the local environment, and this will continue to be the care for the schools of the future. This encourages the participation of other members of society and decreases the separation of schoolwork from the rest of the society. It follows that the voice of the users of school buildings, teachers, students and other members of the school community, should be better heard in the planning processes (The Finnish Board of Education 2002, 48–49.)
When outlining the key elements of the socio-cultural conception of learning, Rogoff (1990, 40) notes that the physical learning environment and the pro-cess of learning itself can never be separated. They are inseparable and sup-port each other. Learning is always dependent on the context of the learning process. Consequently, a well-planned and well-functioning physical learning environment in home economics classrooms can activate, motivate and in-crease the quality of the learning of home economics. A well-planned learning environment increases social interaction between students and between
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Table 1. Comparison of Finnish comprehensive school curriculums and the characteristics of school buildings (Malin 2011)
Changes in the Finnish compre-hensive school curriculum
1976 (Kouluhallitus1976)
1995(Finnish Board of Education 1994)
2004(Finnish Board of Education 2004)
The conception of learning
Behavioristic Constructivistic Socio-constructivistic
Perspective change from teaching to learning
Emphasized students’ ability to remember and repeat the lessons learned as “the right thing”
Students’ own learning activities emphasized. Contents of learning should be relevant to students’ life and environment
The school context outside the school emphasized
Educational method
Teacher-led teaching methods
Teaching emphasizes social interaction within the school
Teaching emphasizes inter-action between school and community
Processing knowledge and information
Individual learning and practicing emphasized
Cooperative learning and practicing cooperative skills emphasized
Collaborative learning and interaction emphasized
Space solutions in the school buildings
Spaces guide teacher-led teaching
Group work facilitated by space solutions
School becomes more easily accessible to surrounding community
Demands of physical learning environment
Closed learning environment
From a closed learning environment to an open learning environment
Open learning environment established
students and the teacher. Learning experiences can be better shared. Patrika-inen (1999, 40) notes that the school architecture and the physical planning of classrooms also affect teachers’ thinking and their pedagogical decisions. Kantola (1989, 111) adds the important notion of the homeliness of the school environment.
This rather mundane aspect, is however, important: because a well-planned environment increases the wellbeing of the people working in the school, they also take more responsibility for taking care of their cozy classroom. With good solutions you increase wellbeing, and with bad solutions you decrease it.
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Learning in home economics classrooms is based on the National Curriculum (2004), which emphasizes flexible and versatile pedagogical solutions. The ultimate aim of home economics education is to learn essential skills and knowledge to support the choices of everyday life at home. It follows that the physical environment of classrooms should reflect changes in modern home and acknowledges the variety of learners (Kivilehto & Malin 2001). Piispanen (2007, 115) draws attention to different learning styles and the needs of these different learners. They all need versatile support, as their prior understanding and skills related to household activities vary a great deal.
The planning guidelines published by the National Board of Education (Aho & Manninen, 2005) emphasize the development of students’ abilities to work together and cooperate. A well-planned physical learning environment en-courages this for, it also inspires teachers to plan various cooperative learning activities for the students instead of individual activities (Hannula 1995, 36; Pantzar 1998, 64). In addition, a good learning environment both facilitates and invites students to work together cooperatively (Pantzar 1998, 64).
Since a well-designed physical learning environment gives crucial support to high-quality learning within home economics, this article explores in more detail how this two-way relationship develops. This article is based on a study (Malin 2011) focusing on the planning of home economics classrooms. One important part of Malin’s study was its focus on the interrelationship of socie-tal changes, changes in housing, and changes in the curriculum and planning guidelines.
The theoretical concept developed to study this was the tension arch (see: Engeström 1995; Engeström & Virkkunen, 2007). This concept was useful for revealing the interdependency of these different changes. Following the rea-soning of Engeström (1995), all changes are precipitated by tensions between old and new demands. This notion also applies well to be interests discussed in this study.
tensions observed during learning activitiesAccording to the socio-cultural conception of learning, knowledge cannot be transferred from one learning situation to another as an unchanged, static entity. Knowledge and experience move and change, as the context changes. It follows that new knowledge is built and produced as cooperation between different activity systems and actors (Engeström 1995.)
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In this study, the two most important activity systems are home and school. Students apply the knowledge, skills and experiences acquired at home while they participate in home economics lessons. Of course, the quality of their skills varies because modern homes are varied and extremely heterogeneous. For example, prior experience of boiling water can be used because most students share this experience from their homes. Teachers can use this fact for deepening lessons on energy consumption, and they can compare, for ex-ample, the energy expenditure of different household appliances (e.g. electric kettle, microwave oven and ordinary oven). Experimenting with energy con-sumption meters deepens students’ understanding of how different practices affect energy consumption. But what kind of household appliances do mod-ern students have in their homes?
Learning activities during home economics classrooms might reflect the tools used and needed in the past, and therefore they may be unable to provide the skills needed for solving the everyday problems. Of today constantly the qualities of the physical learning environments of home economics classroom, should be assessed in relation to the time and context for which they were intended. This kind of historical assessment helps contemporary researchers to understand in more detail how the needs of society have varied and the way the contemporary solutions and tools have developed (see, e.g. Engeström 2009).
For analyzing these relationships more deeply, the novel concept of the ten-sion arch was developed (Figure 1). This concept was adapted from the re-search tradition of developmental work research (see, e.g., Engeström 1995; Engeström & Virkkunen, 2007), where it has been used for analyzing changes during the history of work activities. Some of these changes may induce prob-lems in contemporary activities understandable only by following the path of development from the past. In Malin’s (2011) study the concept proved to be a flexible frame of analysis for understanding changes in housing and the used of household appliances. The tension arch also makes is possible to see how
Figure 1. Tension arch as a analytic tool for understanding the development of activities in housing
PROB
Tension arch
CHANGE PROBLEM/TENSION SOLUTION
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novel solutions and innovations have developed within or between different activity systems (Engeström 1995, 64, 66).
There was for example tension between the activity system of school and the activity system of home because their tools and the physical environment did not match (Tuomi-Gröhn 2009, 151). A part of the home activity system (e.g. food prepared at home) had changed over time becoming more modern than the activity system and tools used at school. This led to other disturbances in the activity system: the tools (e.g. an old-fashioned oven or a modern micro-wave oven) and rules (e.g. saving maximum energy) were in conflict. How-ever, at the same time, these disturbances and tensions revealed the seeds of development and ideas for solving these problems (see e.g. Engeström 1995, 139.)
The tension arch was also used to analyze changes in curriculums and planning guides for classrooms in schools (Malin 2011, 24–25). Several problems were identified, and the seeds of development were revealed. The analysis showed that the same factors influence housing and the planning of home economics classrooms. The environment should fulfill the criteria of healthiness, safety and functionality. New factors revealed were social cooperation (especially important at schools) and ICT technology (both at home and school).
demands of home economics classroomsThe results from the analysis of tension arches were merged with the evalua-tion method (POE/Post-Occupancy Evaluation) used in planning science (Ma-lin 2011, 55–56). This method has been used, for example, in the evaluation of the functionality of newly built school buildings (Preiser et al. 1988, 3). The POE-method added a valuable bridge between the planners (architects and technicians) and the users (teachers and pedagogical experts). Kyttä (2001) notes that since POE-methods include the charting of users, behavior, other methods, such as interviews, should also be used to evaluate the functionality of the new facilities from the perspective of the users.
While further analyzing the functionality of the learning environment in home economics classrooms, physical, pedagogical, social and psychological per-spectives were found to be tightly intertwined (see also: Brotherus et al. 1999, 77; Nuikkinen 2005, 14; Björklid 2005, 27–30). This analysis crystallized into the formulation of the criteria for planning home economics classroom: tech-nical, functional and behavioral (see details: Malin 2011, 57–60). These criteria were also intertwined in an interesting way, and all of them affected how the
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students developed their practical skills, cooperation skills of and skills in using and seeking knowledge. This observation further emphasized the need for a holistic view of learning home economics: experiences from home, the aims of the curriculum and the learning environment of home economics classrooms all influence each other.
technical criteria In this set of criteria the rapid development of modern technology was em-phasized. For example, a safety coupling helped the teacher to control all the electrical appliances in the classroom. Setting the switch to the off-position cut the power from all of the sockets. Automatic switches added to dishwashing machines cut off the water after the washing program was finished. All these examples saved the teacher´s resources for teaching and improved the work-ing conditions of both students and the teacher. Interestingly, the automatic controlling of ventilation and room temperature was not possible in any of the schools in this study. This might, however, be possible in the future, since this kind of technology is becoming cheaper and more available.
The focus on technical criteria helped to develop the planning of furniture. This led to great esthetic changes: previously rather labyrinth-like, closed facil-ities became more open and spacious. They also better matched the housing conditions of the students, as modern homes have bigger, more open-plan kitchens than before. This correspondence in the physical environment helped to improve transfer of learning to and from the home (Tuomi-Gröhn 2007, 42). The new classrooms the also better fulfilled the criteria for a contextual learn-ing environment where networking and cooperation with the world outside the school is more natural (Manninen et al. 2007, 31–33; Piispanen 2008, 71).
functional criteriaThis set of criteria revealed several tensions between school and home, espe-cially due to discrepancies between the tools used in these two environments. For example, at home students used a microwave oven to melt margarine and they prepared food on a ceramic stove. However in old school kitchens they had to use an old-fashioned oven to melt margarine because there was only one microwave oven available for the whole group of students. The food was prepared on ordinary cook tops with cast-iron plates, since there were no in-ductions or ceramic cook tops available in the classroom. This led to problems in transferring school-learned knowledge and skills to the home, because the use and cleaning of the appliances had totally different principles (see: Tuomi-
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Gröhn 2007). Due to the lack of modern appliances and tools, less possibilities for problem-based learning and ecological ways of working were available (Nuikkinen 2005, 51; Piispanen 2008, 115–116.). Old school kitchens were also ergonomically problematic: for example the fixed height of tables was only optimal of some students; the shorter and taller students suffered while baking or chopping vegetables.
In many classrooms class sizes vary from 16–20 students. Therefore, it is es-sential that the teacher can change the arrangement of tables in a flexible way. This also fact emphasizes of the shape of the whole classroom; a smaller class-room is suitable, if it is furnished in a flexible and open way. One example of the novel solutions developed for this study is a set of working tables that can be easily moved to the place they are needed. If they are not needed they can be moved aside, and a nest of tables is formed (Photo 1).
Behavioral criteriaThis set of criteria revealed tensions between the curriculum and the school kitchen. The curriculum stipulates that students should be able to practice their
Photo 1. A flexible set of working tables enables cooperation between students
Photo 2a and 2b. Fixed cupboards were a physical hindrance to cooperation between students
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cooperation and communication skills and skills for seeking knowledge. Before they were renovated, many school kitchens had fixed cupboards and hoods, which were physical obstacle to seeing each other and talking (Photo 2a). The way the kitchen unit was planned also affected the possibility of cooperation. Students could work independently, but cooperation with others was not pos-sible because they worked with their backs to each other (Photo 2b).
All three sets of criteria discussed above were applied while planning the new classrooms for home economics. While these criteria guided the planning pro-cess, new innovations and solutions were developed which also supported the learning and curriculum demands. The typical changes needed in renovation processes are:
the replacement of labyrinth-like furnishing with more open
and clear furnishing and fixed tables, cupboards and working tables with flexible and movable furniture adaption to the needs of modern ICT technology (e.g., smart-
boards, computers, tablets and internet-connections available)
Figure 2. Learning and cooperating in both open and closed facilities
individual learning cooperative learning – closed space – closed space – no cooperation – learners try to cooperate
teacher as controller closed and fixed solution
open solution
teacher as counselor
– open space – open space – no cooperation – real cooperation between between learnerslearners
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All these changes support and facilitate inter-student cooperation between students and the teacher. This central finding of the classroom research is sum-marized in cooperation Figure 2.
Interestingly, the physical solutions applied to the learning environment af-fect the role of the teacher. If it is a closed environment, then students move around a lot, they call for the teacher and there is more noise and movement in the classroom. The teacher has to control the students instead of facilitating their learning. In an open solution, the teacher sees the activities of the 16 or so students, and she can see before they ask when they need help. This led to calmer atmosphere in the classroom, and the teacher could better focus on counselling and supporting the learning processes of the students (Figure 2).
multi-voiced planning processHow can this kind of novel learning environment be planned? The other aim of this paper is to focus on the planning meetings of the various experts and understand how well the criteria developed in this study helped to modernize the planning of home economics classrooms. The concept of multi-voicedness was used to analyze how well the different voices of the planners were inte-grated into the planning process and which criteria were more difficult to put into practice, thus inducing tensions (see Tuomi-Gröhn 2001, 30).
Paldanius (1997) claims that the traditional way of planning needs to be com-plemented with various interactive and cooperative arenas of discussion. These arenas help the voices of the users, planners and experts to be heard. In this study these kinds of arenas of discussion are:
Collaborative planning, in which the pool of experts was expand-ed. The researcher and the home economics teachers participat-ed more in the planning process. Here the emphasis was jointly-planned on a cooperative, dynamic, discursive way of working together. As a result the environment better corresponded to the values of the users, and at the same time it fulfilled the demands of being an ecological, economical and well-functioning environ-ment. (Horelli et al., 1998, 8; Healy 1997, 133.)
Communicative planning, which meant here the equal participa-tion of all members of the expanded planning team. The techni-cal experts planned, evaluated and researched various solutions and innovations, such as the development of open spaces (e.g.
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no visual obstacles) and the development of flexible solutions (e.g. movable working tables). The planning process proceeded in slow steps, involving careful discussion of the problems faced and solutions found (see: Aura et al. 1997, Engeström 1995.) The participants were not simply trying to sell their own ideas; rather, they were participating in a joint learning process were different views and ideas were freely exchange (Kaaja 2001, 32). Here the architect was a key person, as s/he had to glue the different ideas together and reform them if needed (Aura et al. 1997, Healey 1997, 158–163).
The features of collaboratively shared expertise were evident in some planning meetings, as the expertise of the planners and the researcher was combined. The participants could see beyond their own area of expertise and share the visions of the others. (Seit-amaa-Hakkarainen & Lahti 2008, 197–199.) A shared tool proved to be essential for this kind of planning. The researcher had made sketch of the new classroom-plan, and this helped to focus the discussion amongst the different experts. What was emerging was a common language, rules and social cooperation between the participants (Engeström, Engeström & Kärkkäinen 1995, 322).
The researcher could contribute to the planning meetings with use-ful information (e.g. use of household appliances) which crossed the borders of different areas of expertise (Engeström 2001, 23). Tuomi-Gröhn (2001, 14) notes that this kind of dialogue forms a learning community in which all the partners actively produce new knowledge about the task at hand.
For example, in the following quotation the researcher is leading the discus-sion towards the behavioral criteria and the needs of students practicing their skills of cooperation and communication. In this situation the photographs and sketch of the kitchen were artifacts of cooperation between the teacher and the planners (Photo 3). (see Horelli 2002.)
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Researcher:.. These (photos) are now taken from the schools I have participated in planning. Here you see case 1, where we used this kind of movable working table, you see the students can approach the table quite well … Teacher 4: … there you can see a solution where there are no cupboards above the table, there seems to be the maximum amount of open space, a cupboard is bad, you cannot see…
The concept of multi-voicedness has also been used in environmental plan-ning. According to Horelli and Vepsä (1995, 98) it facilitates dialogue between two different lines of planning: “the hard’ systems-approach and a “soft” ev-eryday-approach. They emphasize the need for both approaches at the same time, because the “soft”-approach may not be versatile enough to acknowl-edge the complexities of planning and because the “hard” approach may lead to solutions which fall to take the users´ perspectives into consideration. In a study by Vepsä (1993) study similar voices were found as in this study. Those representing the commissioner often used a techno-mechanistic way of speak-ing, the architects focused the esthetic or usual aspects of the project, which was reflected in their speech patterns, and the teachers and researcher raised more functional voices. Social-functional voices were raised in the communi-cative planning processes.
In this study, techno-mechanistic voices were common in planning studio A, where the meetings proceeded according to a traditional protocol-based meet-ing formula. The chair of the meeting opened the discussion, went through the minutes of previous meeting with the voice of meetings technique. This voice emphasized structural forms of planning and economy, and in the discussions technical criteria and the laws relating to the building of schools were carefully followed (see also Vepsä 1993, 6).
Photo 3. Movable working tables where the students can practice their cooperation and communication skills
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Chair: This was related to commissioner´s wishes. Let´s proceed to point 4 and discuss, as we have used to do before, issues raising from architect, structural planners and users. Let us begin from architect´s viewpoints…
The esthetic-visual voice was present in the planning meetings when the ar-chitects spoke with the voice of planning. In this voice planning guidelines and experiences from previous projects are emphasized. This also leads to a certain formality of planning. “Getting things into order” was important, as the home economics classroom was also viewed as a part of the whole school system. Compared to Vepsä’s (1993, 6) results, the planners in this study were more flexible in regard to making exceptions and experimenting with new methods.
The functional voice was raised when the researcher used experiences from her previous cases in other schools. The researcher challenged the planners and representatives of the city to consider the possibilities of modern technol-ogy. Her voice was also the “researcher’s voice”.
The social-functional voice emerged when the architect, the chair of the meet-ing and the researcher together created an atmosphere where all participants could freely express their opinions, which varied according to their educa-tional and experimental background. Joint understanding was actively sought by talking, listening and challenging the other participants. This voice also raised the behavioral criteria under joint discussion. The chair of the meeting encouraged the researcher to make her own sketch about home economics classroom planning, while doing this she was using the voice of cooperation.
crossing over the bordersThe researcher crossed borders while facilitating the planning meetings with her expertise and combined the different views of the other experts (Tuomi-Gröhn 2001, 30–33). An important tool for this as a shared artifact was the sketch of the classroom (Drawing 1). This artifact helped to form a common language amongst the group of planners (Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Lahti 2008, 197–199; Engeström, Engeström & Kärkkäinen 1995, 322).
According to Engeström (1993b) the driving force of innovative learning is argumentation, where different practices and explanations meet. In this study this kind of argumentation emerged while discussing the sketch, which
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received support from the architect but opposition from the principal and the chief education officer. In the following quotation the architect is arguing for the plan.
Chief education officer: … I do not know, what that is? But I think that these plans (the previous lay-out drawn by the architect) are awfully clear, even though the shape is a bit tube-like.
Researcher: ...this may lead to the teacher always standing behind some students, if we organize the classroom in that way Chair: …you should think of the flexibility of use of classroom, you should have a place for every student. In this other plan you do not have that flexibility
Architect: I agree – in my view that one is more supportive of teaching. Think of the environment; I would argue that is it easier to plan it cozy because you will get the feeling of space in the middle of the classroom
Chair: well, when I think myself, I have only heard these explana-tions; I would take this option (planned by the researcher)
Chief education officer: at the very beginning I said this that this was ok; we need to have flexibility; there might be bigger or small-er groups of students
At its best all the partners in the planning meeting learned from the opinions and visions of the others. It was also important that the architect was able negotiate over and combine these various views (see also Aura et al. 1997, Healey 1997, 158–163).
Architect: …it would be very good if you (researcher) would talk because you now have information that nobody else in this group has…
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According to Engeström et al. (1995, 321–322) boundary crossing is demand-ing, as there are different obstacles that the researcher should acknowledge. For example, “group thinking” can be problematic. Members of a certain group strive for unanimity, and by doing so they may override the ideas of the others, and also decrease the motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. Alternative solutions may remain undiscussed because free discussion and innovation are blocked.
This kind of thinking may also lead to an overestimation of the value of one´s own ideas and the suppression of those of others. “Groupthink” typi-cally leads to an overestimation of the in-group, closed-mindedness and ste-reotypes of out-groups, which all build boundaries instead of removing them. Another possible mechanism preventing boundary crossing is fragmentation of viewpoints and a lack of “shared mental models” among a community of practitioners. (see: Engeström et al.1995, 321–322). Fragmentation may make it impossible for experts from different contexts to understand each other and exchange ideas about a problem because they are not speaking the same language.
Drawing 1. Sketch of the classroom drawn by architects and proposed by the researcher
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conclusionsWith the help of the criteria for the functionality of home economics class-rooms developed here and the multi-voiced planning process, the home eco-nomics classrooms in our study changed from being pedagogically closed and complicated spaces to being integrated and open spaces where the flexibility and versatility of the learning environment was emphasized. The teacher be-came a facilitator and counselor instead of a classroom controller. This is also a finding applicable other school subjects. Too often, old-fashioned classrooms lead to individual learning-activities. In the schools of the future all means of activating cooperative learning should be carefully examined.
The criteria for the functionality of home economics classrooms developed in this study also prompted the discussions in the planning groups, and formed the tools for boundary crossing. The researcher visualized the tensions iden-tified in the past activities, and this sharing of pictures and sketches made it possible to create novel solutions for these problems. The researcher’s actions also opened cooperative and multi-voiced discussion between the participants in the planning process. In our view, these kinds of shared objects should be greater utilized in the planning of classrooms, in order to bring the pedagogi-cal expertise of the teachers into the planning process. For example, teachers could video record functionally problematic situations and objects, and then these video-clips could be used for understanding the problem and seeking various solutions. The actors (e.g. the teachers and students) could also com-ment on their own activities seen in the video-clips, and this reflection could also be brought to the planning meetings. This method of stimulated recall-re-flection is useful because it jointly broadens the expertise of the users, i.e., the students and the teachers. We propose that this kind of shared planning, with students included as an equal partner in the planning meetings, is studied in more detail in the future.
In conclusion, we have shown here the value of creating multi-voiced planning activities that aim to cross the traditional boundaries of expertise. As a result of these kinds of activities, problems were solved creatively and novel solutions were developed, such as movable working tables. Some problems were solved in a traditional way, such as the placing of the students’ tables for group work and dining. There were also unsolved problems, such the teachers’ wish to control ventilation and heating. During the planning meetings, some of the participants (e.g. the teachers) became active discussants and commentators, adding new ideas to the shared pool of knowledge on the possibilities of the planning process. Some participants actively sought new information and offered it for the use of the whole planning group (e.g. the architect and the
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researcher). All this created shared expertise, as the participants were ’forced’ to explore the unknown solutions and learn from each other. (Tuomi-Gröhn 2001, 14–15; Tuomi-Gröhn, Engeström & Young 2003, 4).
Boundary crossing, as observed here, is also a learning process which resem-bles the cooperative and participatory planning approach previously studied by Horelli (2002) and Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Lahti (2008, 197). The plan-ning process reported here builds a model of shared expertise which can be used and applied in future planning processes of home economics classrooms (see: Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström 2001, 22). The role of common language was found to be important here; without common language, it is impossible to develop common understanding, the lack of which may lead to unequal power positions, which also hinder the shared creation of new ideas (Aura et al. 1997). In many of the previous planning processes of home economics classrooms, teachers and planners had worked in separate groups. This was problematic because the teachers were not necessarily able to read and cor-rectly understand the lay-outs and the technical symbols used. Conversely, the pedagogical needs of teachers are often unfamiliar to more technically-orient-ed planners. It is crucial for all future planning processes that the different ac-tors are brought together and that they are guided towards boundary crossing activities that create multi-voiced planning groups.
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authors
Marko Kuuskorpi, Principal, Ph.D., Piikkiö comprehensive school, Kaarina ([email protected])
Nuria Cabellos González, Official School of Languages Teacher and Educational Researcher, Spain
Kristiina Kumpulainen, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki ([email protected])
Anna Mikkola, MA, Researcher, Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki ([email protected])
Jukka Sulonen, MSc (arch) SAFA
Krisse Sulonen, Councelor of Education PM
Harri Ketamo, Ph.D., founder, SkillPixels Ltd
Merja Meriläinen, University lecturer, Ph.D., ME ([email protected])
Maarika Piispanen, University teacher, Ed.D. ([email protected])
Anne Malin, University lecturer, Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki
Päivi Palojoki, professor, Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki
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