Re: Boundary object

Julia Mame Matuga (jmatuga who-is-at indiana.edu)
Mon, 27 Oct 1997 21:58:21 -0500 (EST)

In response to Eva & Peter's comments:
My first teaching job (as a K-12 art teacher) was at a Middle School which
had (and still has) an open classroom design/concept. The school itself
resembles a prison (I live down the street from it) and, as a teacher, I
felt somewhat like a prison guard rather than a teacher. The
instructional capabilities (to engage in any meaningful dialogue or
interactions) with students was greatly reduced/limited by not only the
design of the school/rooms but by the idiotic class schedule (students
would actually walk thru my classroom to get to the other artroom at the
midpoint of every class!). More importantly, however, what the fact that
my room was located across the hall from the office and as a result the
administrators were always "dropping by". Why? Because of the level of
"noise". As an art teacher, whenever I see a quiet artroom it makes me
very, very nervous. (As an aside---I never met nor spoke with any other
teacher while I was a teacher in that school)
Julia

On Mon, 27 Oct 1997, Eva Ekeblad wrote:

> At 06.27 +0100 97-10-27, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> >The first high school I taught in
> >had an open classroom design which was justified in terms of how it would
> >end restrictions on how we think about learning, disenclose our minds,
> >promote open dialogue, etc. Yet teachers did their best to construct as
> >many barriers as possible between their class and others. Administrators
> >used the structure to keep tabs on teachers with "bad attitudes." Students
> >used the structure to wave to friends in other classes.
>
> Interesting, interesting. I have never been in an open classroom school
> myself, although ther were some built in this region (for primary
> education). From the school lore I have heard these educational "office
> landscapes" were failures in much the same way as Peter describes: i.e.
> the spatial openness may have rather counteracted open dialogue, open minds
> and collaboration in general. The anecdotically displayed typical
> behaviours of teachers, administrators and students point to some of the
> contradictory affordances of open space -- i.e. for people differently
> positioned in the social space the open classroom carries different
> sociospatial affordances: it allows surveillance (by administrators) as
> well as subversion (by students) but it counteracts the efforts at
> educational control by the systematic carriers of tradition. I take the
> construction of barriers to be something not just figural or organizational
> but also literal: moving shelves and other screening objects into strategic
> places.
>
> The scenario also makes me wonder: were there NO attempts at organizing the
> structure of groups and curriculum in a corresponding fashion? As far as I
> understand the original ideas were much more of a package covering both
> "the hard and the soft", to import some computer jargon. But as it was
> implemented here, building decisions aren't made at all in connection with
> curricular decision making etc. Not at all the same institutional levels
> etc. Was that the same in the case you described, Peter?
>
> Eva
>
>
>

Julia M. Matuga
Dept. of Counseling and Educational Psychology
School of Education, 4021B
Indiana University, Bloomington

"The theoretician's prayer: 'Dear Lord, forgive me the sin
of arrogance, and Lord, by arrogance I mean the following...."

--Leon Lederman