The Garden in the Machine: An Environmental History of Progressive School Design

• In Event: 34.032 - Post-Structural Approaches to Educational History

Abstract

Educators have long imbued learning spaces with particular qualities: from “democratic” environments of 1960s open classrooms to “collaborative” atmospheres of school-based makerspaces. While such associations between space and pedagogical values have been largely ahistorical to date, this paper interrogates how they have emerged and changed over time. Drawing on environmental history and archival research on Philadelphia alternative schools, the paper traces shifting meanings of architecture and classroom design across three periods of “progressive pedagogy.” In doing so, it theorizes “school spaces” not as a priori arrangements, but as contingent ideologies, materialized and deployed for particular purposes at particular times. Further, it argues that opening the black box of classroom space has important implications for discussions school ethics and equity.

Author

• T. Philip Nichols, University of Pennsylvania