Education eats good ideas. It boils down its best levers for change into cliches and shells of ideas. The complex is turned into checklists and clickbait.
Modern classroom design is sitting on this precipice. As more teachers and leaders race for tables on wheels and bouncy chairs in the name of flexible seating, the heart of this transformational change is ripped out of our hands. What then happens is instead of designing classrooms that positively impact students, we are decorating classrooms, celebrating the new, and then moving on to the next shiny thing. Pinterest-pretty classrooms bring instant gratification, but little else.
“Designers aren’t led by momentum, inertia, tradition or the latest education fads. They design based on feedback.”
How can we reclaim this important necessary work and make school and classroom design impactful in all schools? It starts with the designer’s mindset. As educator Pernille Ripp recently reminded us, what is flexible furniture without flexible learning? I would go further to say, what is flexible learning without the long-term flexible mindset needed to meet the changing needs of the kids we serve? A designer’s mindset is based on noticing the invisible so it can be seen again, and noticing the things that subtly impact learning. Designers aren’t led by momentum, inertia, tradition or the latest education fads. They design based on feedback that they gather from students, parents and the entire learning community.
Designers are researchers and learners. There is emerging research from Europe and Australia around space design. Designers are connecting with places like the University of Melbourne, Steelcase, and Meteor Educationwho are doing the action research on current best practices. They look for great examples from places like New Zealand where almost all of the public schools are on a journey toward modern learning spaces. Designers aren’t trying to justify their work on individual pieces of research that are stretched to apply to space design.