Learning by design?

A recent tweet by Jason Elsom made me sit up and take notice: 'We need to stop designing schools for teaching and start designing schools for learning.' And therein lies the dichotomy of education. Are teachers there to instruct, or to facilitate? Do they lecture, or do they support? Most teachers do both depending on context, but I believe it's the balance that Jason is questioning in his statement. We can either place an emphasis on teaching or we can privilege learning as the most important facet of education. Which do you favour?

Also, what does Jason mean by 'designing'? Does he mean the shape and appearance of classrooms and other built environments in which we conduct education? If so, we need to take care deciding what activities go on in those spaces, before we begin fixing screens and display boards on walls, configuring tables and chairs in blocks or rows and even placing clocks on walls. Should chairs be on wheels for greater flexibility, and can the furniture in the classroom be configured in multiple ways to adapt to needs? Do we want to synchronise group behaviour, or do we want students to be able to express themselves as individuals? Do we want them to learn what is inside our heads, and the content of textbooks, or do we want them to go beyond this knowledge and discover new ideas for themselves? You see, it all depends on your philosophy of education - its purpose and the value it holds for you.

So, do we design our schools with learning in mind, or do we configure them so they best optimise teaching? All schools are different, and simply walking into some classrooms within each school will tell you a lot about the teacher beliefs that operate in them.

By design, does Jason Elsom mean the learning experience? Our curricula and schemes of work are so crammed full of content there sometimes seems little room for movement, no flexibility or scope for creativity. If we design our lessons around the students, we see a free flowing, open terrain within which they can experiment, learn actively, make mistakes and learn in ways that suit their individual needs and motivations. If however, we design lessons around the teacher with activities that are rigid, with no room for movement, is it any wonder the students want to leave the classroom as quickly as they can?

Designing spaces is vitally important, but so is designing learning experiences. We each need to decide the true purpose of education and then create the spaces and experiences that provide the best possible learning outcomes for our students.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons


Learning by design? by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.