Pedagogical Approaches

Julie BryceCatherine Smith

“Look at your learning space with 21st-century eyes: Does it work for what we know about learning today, or just for what we knew about learning in the past?

“Does this learning environment support a child’s natural instinct to learn through creation and discovery?” (Trung Le, OWP/P p56)

“If we are looking for new pedagogical practices, we have to have facilities that will enable those to happen. So you want flexible spaces where people can group and re-group, where you’re not stuck in one configuration with teachers at the front.”

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory is implicitly asking the designer of the learning environment to consider a variety of learning spaces – spaces in diverse sizes, materials and colours, as well as spaces with different transparency, connectivity and agility. The one-size-fits-all idea really isn’t acceptable any more. (Rick Dewar p63)

Note the MS Classrooms are spaces with fantastic potential for:– Multiple ‘Zones’– Agility / Flexibility of learning spaces– Active Learning – Bringing the Outside in– Display Learning– Resource Learning– Social/Collaborative Learning– Sensory Learning

It is about more than the furniture!

The physical environment of the building is very important, but what really makes an institution is the habits of mind that become taken for granted in the community that occupies the institution. An institution is the people and their ways of thinking. If you really want to shift a culture, it’s two things: its habits and its habitats – the habits of mind and the physical environment in which people operate.” (Sir Ken Robinson “The Creativity Challenge” p57)

Explicit Teaching Zone

Make classrooms agile: A learning space that can be reconfigured on a dime will engage different kinds of learners and teachers.

Option to screen view to minimize distractions

Individual work zone

Injecting a learning space with playfulness and humour creates a warm and welcoming atmosphere. This aligns with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs: if children feel safe, they are ready to learn, and if they are having fun, they feel safe.

Define the learning landscape by providing environmental experiences that are developmentally appropriate. In all developmental stages children desire immersion, solitude and interaction in a close, knowable world; however, from ages 12 to 15 … social gathering places … take on a new significance. (“Beyond Ecophobia” p182)

Collaborative Zone

Bring the outside in: Transport the community, the landscape and faraway places into the classroom with visuals and objects that call them to mind. Use outdoor learning spaces – let them ‘push in’ to the indoor space.

Display learning – track progress in a visible way.

Active Learning – museums invite learners to act on available information – including information from one’s own thoughts, feelings and impressions - in order to form new ideas. An environment rich in evocative objects, whether it’s a classroom or a museum – triggers active learning by letting students pick what to engage with.

Sound, smell, taste, touch and movement power memory. An environment rich in sensory experiences helps students retain and retrieve what they learn.

Storage for Resource-Based Learning items and other materials that is easily accessible without crowding or having to ‘wait in line’.

A cleverly designed entrance helps students begin and end the lesson efficiently – labelled trays or boxes where students can leave homework or teachers can leave notes or materials for the beginning or end of the lesson.

Students ‘home’ space which could have a box or cube to store personal items such as stationery and items brought to class but not required for the lesson, to replace ‘tidy trays’.

Plan for the unknown: new technology brings with it new teaching opportunities – design a learning environment that will allow teachers to modify their methods and expectations as technology changes.

Pedagogical Approaches:Resource-based learningGame-based learningExperiential learningMulti-sensory learningCooperative learningLearning conversationsModellingInquiry LearningProject-Based LearningExplicit Teaching (Theory to Practice Learning)