Location, Location: Using the Physical Space of the Classroom for Pedagogical Advantage

• In Event: Space and Technologies for Learning in Schools, Museums, and Workplaces: Recent Approaches in Design-Based Research

Abstract

Elementary teachers have long employed “stations” within their classrooms, where certain tables or corners are reserved as reading nooks, game tables, or other meaningful zones of activity. Another popular approach is the “value line”, where a long string is extended across the classroom, with the endpoints representing extreme values on a particular issue. Students are then asked to “vote with their feet” by positioning themselves bodily at a point along the string that represents their preference or opinion about the issue (Kagan, 1994). Educational researchers are increasingly interested in embodied forms of learning, where physical movement and tangible interactions are seen as cognitive or neurocognitive mediators to learning. For example, in embodied astronomy, students physically act out the motions of planets, moons and Sun, resulting in deeper conceptual understandings of celestial motion (Plummer, Wasco & Slagle, 2011).

Building on the work of Brown & Campione (1996) and others who have explored social or collective forms of inquiry, we have developed a pedagogical model called Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI), where students work together to create a knowledge base that serves as a resource for subsequent inquiry activities (Slotta & Najafi, 2012). In KCI curricula, students are scaffolded by a “smart classroom” infrastructure (e.g., handheld computers, large wall-mounted displays, and many other interface methods) as they engage in a complex sequence of activities where they collaboratively develop ideas and evidence, reflect on materials, and create solutions to problems (Slotta, Tissenbaum & Lui, 2013).

This paper synthesizes three KCI research studies that explore how the physical environment of the classroom can support collaborative inquiry. The first is an elementary science activity where simulated insect colonies are shown on large monitors embedded in each of the four the classroom walls (see Moher et al, 2012). The four walls vary in terms of humidity, light and temperature, making the physical location meaningful (see Figure: Wallcology). The second is a high school physics activity in which students collectively solve “Hollywood Physics” problems, where they must interpret video clips in terms of the relevant physics, and set them up as solvable problems (see Figure: Physics). Four different videos occupy distinct wall spaces, with large projected displays that capture and aggregate student work, and intelligent agents deciding which students should be grouped together at each stage. In the third example, the smart classroom is turned into an immersive, cave-like experience for groups of 12-16 students, called EvoRoom. An animation of a Sumatran rainforest was projected onto the large walls of the room, accompanied by an audio track of rainforest sounds. Using tablet computers, students were guided to observe flora and fauna as the EvoRoom “evolved” through 8 time periods: 200, 150, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 and 2 Million years ago. At each time point, students capture evolutionary relationships on their tablets, which were displayed as a collective representation on a smartboard at the front of the room. We will conclude with a discussion of the role of physical location as a pedagogical and conceptual scaffold.

Authors

• James D. Slotta, University of Toronto

• Mike Tissenbaum, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Michelle Lui, University of Toronto - OISE