>While we tend to think of material contexts as mainly constraining, they
>are of course also enabling, and their affordances are important. But a
>constraint may not be quite the negative of an affordance.
How true! More than 20 years ago Anthony Giddens reworked the Durkheimian
notion of structural constraints emphasizing that every constraint
simultaneously enabled. In a summary work on his approach he wrote,
"Carlstein quite rightly points out . . . fundamental constrains upon
action are associated with the causal influences of the body and the
material world. I have already indicated that these are regarded of
essential importance in structuration theory. Capability and coupling
constraints, within definite material settings, do indeed 'screen' (as he
puts it) the possible forms of activity in which human beings engage. But
these phenomena are also at the same time enabling features of action."
(Constitution of Society, p. 172-73)
I think the interplay between the constraining and the enabling functions is
an arena in which the "socialization/education struggle" is waged. The
schools not-so-hidden agenda of producing individuals who conform to certain
general behavioral structures (e.g., standing in line, waiting one's turn,
waiting to be recognized, being silent, keeping one's hands to oneself,
paying attention, asking permission, etc.) is more directly reinforced with
certain types of classroom arrangement and one needn't probe to deeply into
the symbolic metaphysics of space to understand this function. As to Mike's
original question, the relationship between spatial arrangements and the
teaching-learning process of specific subject areas, I wonder if any real
studies have ever been conducted. Obviously band can't be taught too well
in little "skinny toosh" desks, but when one gets into other subject areas:
((social studies v. literature) v math) v (non-lab sciences v lab sciences)
etc., what's the story?
Nate's post is interesting in this light too since the association of open
classroom approaches with middle through upper class schools, and the fixed
seating arrangements of lower class schools, carries a very powerful covert
message: middle and upper class kids are shown thereby that their judgment
is respected, the institution puts confidence in them that they will not do
the innapropriate actions; whereas the lower class kids are given the
message right off the bat that they are not trusted, must be strongly
constrained (and consequently weakly enabled?). In any event one should
ask, as Willis did in his classic study, "Learning to Labor", for what are
the students being enabled?
One way to look at it (using language from Vygotsky and Luria) might be:
conditional-reflex-education for the lower classes,
logical-memory-development for the upper classes. Of the former it's
interesting to note that Vygotsky recalled the psychologist Sherrington's
words upon seeing a classic Pavlovian experiment [getting a dog to associate
being burned by electricity with food]. "Now I understand the joy with
which martyrs ascended the fire." (Stds on Hist of Behav, p. 43) I guess
the martyrs managed to overcome the material constraint of fire on flesh in
the light (no pun) of being "enabled" to go to Heaven without waiting in
line in Purgatory! Vygotsky points out that "In this simple experiment
[Sherrington] saw the prototype of those profound changers in our nature
that are produced by enculturation (education) and by the environment's
influence on us." (ibid)
As always there is a danger in separating off the locale in question (e.g.,
the classroom) from the larger contexts (more encompassing activity
systems?) in which it has a position and one or more functions. The
function of schools for lower class students (say El Sereno, CA) might not
be much to the lower class students' liking and consequently the lower class
school classrooms might be a bit more of a site for social struggles than
the classrooms in more affluent areas (say Ojai, CA). Giddens uses Willis'
study a lot, as do Eckert and Carspecken, to look at how school spaces serve
as locales within which many of the broader social struggles are carried out
and affected. The internal aspects (e.g., this classroom is intended to be
used for cultivating an appreciation of mathematical form) might be so
subordinated to the external aspects (e.g., only a small fraction of this
classroom's students have realistic chances of doing anything with their
lives that will require an appreciation of mathematical form) that the issue
organization for most appropriate subject content is moot.
I think it is important to take into account that teachers and
administrators already have an instinctive understanding of the
relationship between space and the "educational" activity . They also have
or develop (after the three to five halcyon years of idealism during which
50% leave the teaching profession) an understanding of the relationship
between the putative subject content and the necessities of the
non-curricular, not-so-covert content of developing and ensuring compliance
with "classroom culture".
Classroom space is a domain of multiple social struggles; it is always
something negotiated with students who at the miminum will attempt to choose
where they sit. The degree to which students are allowed these "freedoms"
is part of the educational message. The content of the message has
something to do with the content of those struggles that are generated from
within the broader society, the more encompassing time-geographies, or
activity systems.
>PS. Leigh Star has been writing recently about the role of infrastructures
>in embodying our notions of functionality for legitimate activity; to walls
>and seats, we have to add electrical wiring (and LAN cabling), plumbing,
>staircases, windows, and the more explicitly semiotic infrastructures of
>classification standards, etc. Really makes one want to understand better
>just what are the functions of matter in making meaningful activity
>integrable across time and space.
It can be expected that focusing on a site without taking into account its
relation to other sites in what Giddens calls the "time-geography" and also
failing to consider the refraction of class and other social struggles into
the classroom would lead to a metaphysical approach and conceptualization of
the relation between space and enculturation/education (vospitanie), albeit
a post-modern metaphysics.
Paul H. Dillon