Mike, i think that this is very much the case - rather like colleges,
the campus and classrooms of an american high school are built to the
standards of thirty desks in a classroom - more or less - with the
instructor placed in front and students in rows. only very specialized
courses - chemistry, art, music, theater, auto - wood - metal shop,
drafting and in the old days, home economics, warranted specialized work
spaces.
i can remember only work coming out of whole language texts for
elementary schools in which the form of the classroom was expected to
follow the function of the instruction, or early childhood work that is
centered around developmentally appropriate practices - Andrea Butler's
work out of Australia comes to mind - stuff she wrote in the seventies.
i also talked to several high school math instructors asking them whose
works they read in order to get a theoretical grounding - or even
instructional strategies - that they followed. none could recall a person
in particular, though remembered that there had been texts from master
level classes (if they had a master's degree). i was surprised, because
elementary school teacher, again who are fairly familiar with whole
language, can cite authors they have read, i.e., Donald Graves or Donald
Wood or Reggie Routledge, etc. on the other hand, they also had no
knowledge base for mathematics similar to their whole language knowledge
base. the most common reference was Marilyn Burns' several books on math
.... or math programs, like Math Their Way. But rooms were nevered
organized for math instruction the way a room was organized when
considering whole language instruction.
rather late in responding, but .....
phillip