Three Schools for Older Children and Young People in Iceland, Italy, and the United Kingdom

• In Event: Changing Design of School Environments Is Changing Education: Changing Processes Through the Eyes of the Stakeholder

Abstract

1. Objectives
This contribution focuses on teaching and learning space within three schools catering for students aged over 11 years. School space and educational practices are conceptualised as forming a dynamic, reciprocal relationship, where the setting influences activities (Sigurðardóttir and Hjartarson, 2011) but school users can change the setting to reflect needs and values (Uline et al., 2009).
2. Theoretical framework
The relationship to each school centred on being physically located within the specific school space, with ‘the school’ understood spatially, defined by its material elements entwined with its inhabitants’ use of these (McGregor, 2004), but recognising connections and commonalities with other schools. As Thomson and Hall propose, this ‘notion of “place” captures the idea of a school that is one of a kind, simultaneously both patterned and distinctive’ (Thomson and Hall, 2017:13).
3. Methods
The schools are located in three countries with differing histories, climates and educational policies. They were visited by a multidisciplinary international group that included academics from education, architecture, history (for one school) and sociology (for another school). The intention was to observe space and practices in each school, guided by the principal or a lead teacher, and reflecting within the group on aspects that were salient, drawing on disciplinary and national perspectives. The overarching aim was to investigate the relationships between the physical environment of each school and pedagogy.
The methodology, adapted from architecture, was that of the site visit or ‘study trip’. This should be understood, in educational research terms, as a very open, inductive, approach, rejecting procedural research style to embrace the uncertainty of collaborative meaning-making (see Frankham et al., 2014, for discussion of such an approach to analysis). The data could be construed broadly, including everything we experienced and attempted to record through sketches, photographs and notes, together with any documents collected and opinions conveyed by the guides.

Authors

• Pamela Woolner, Newcastle University

• Gonçalo Canto Moniz, University of Coimbra

• Ulrike Stadler-Altmann, Universität Koblenz-Landau

• Anna Kristín Sigurðardóttir, University of Iceland

• Torfi Hjartarson, University of Iceland