Re: What's new in classroom configurations

From: Phil Chappell (philchappell@mac.com)
Date: Tue Mar 01 2005 - 04:09:29 PST


Interesting responses from Jay, Phillip, Lara, Imaj, Mike and Andy (the
links of Andy's show some variations in utilising classroom space, for
those who haven't looked). I was initially intrigued both from the
point of view of power relations between teacher and students, as well
as the potential for more timely and sensitive interventions from the
teacher during student to student interaction. I take people's points
that the metaphor of surveillance can be critically applied in very
useful ways. However I just wonder, from the point of view of the
teacher being able to provide assistance contingent upon small group
needs (rather than the control over student behaviour that the author
lent toward), whether, as Imaj says, the "social activity itself that
is the dominant spatializing force" be afforded greater guidance and
support from the teacher in this, or a similar use of space????

I say this from the perspective of a classroom language teacher still
struggling with the most useful ways to intervene in a "social
interactionist/constructivist" (gulp) teaching/learning environment (I
have held myself back from linking the metaphors of scaffolding and the
zpd for obvious reasons ;-) - and one who remains in a crisis with
respect to teacher-student power relations.

Thanks all for some stimulating thoughts, and thanks to a colleague not
on the list who sent the text from the Guardian.

Phil

On 01/03/2005, at 4:50 AM, IRAJ IMAM wrote:

>  
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> Phil posted The Observer, Sunday February 27, 2005
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>  "A new teaching system, revolutionary in more than one sense, has been
>
> developed and tested in secret."
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>  
>
> Why a teaching experiment is tested in secret? Teachings are more
> associated with and for public, and involve public. Only things that
> deal with control usually are kept in secret. Is this a new
> 'revolutionary teaching' for controlling the students?
>
>  
>
> "Instead of simply standing at the front, their teacher, circles them
> on a curved 'racetrack', occasionally taking up a position on a podium
> in the centre of the room. No longer can reluctant students skulk at
> the back of the class or plant themselves on the periphery of the
> teacher's field of vision…
>
>  
>
> Mirrors mounted at three points serve as eyes in the back of the
> teacher's head…. 
>
>  
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> This classroom works so well because the racetrack around the room
> means there is no back of the class…
>
>  
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> The round classroom also eradicates the so-called 'attention zone', a
> triangle immediately in front of the teacher which inevitably receives
> 90 per cent of his or her attention.”
>
>  
>
> Why one needs to produce a space for controlling the children in
> education? Is classroom a hostile territory to be occupied by the
> teacher (with help from technology)?
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>  
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>  
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> Jay said it very clearly:
>
> “in fact it all sounds a great deal like Foucault's account of
> Bentham's prison panopticon, in reverse (surveillance from the
> periphery rather than from the center), and as much concerned with
> control and surveillance as with anything to do with the positive side
> of learning (i.e. learning what you want to learn, vs. what the state
> wants you to learn)”
>
>  
>
>  Yes, it looks like the student space is designed in order to provide
> complete transparency for the teacher--both from center and
> periphery . He ‘circles them’ he is ‘in the centre of the room’ and he
> also has ‘eyes in the back of [his] head’. 
>
>  
>
> It also seems to me that the ‘old classroom’ more corresponded to
> Foucault's Bentham of discipline society, while this one resembles
> more Deleuze’s control society.
>
>  
>
> In the former, social space was segregated between more or less
> isolated multiple disciplined spaces --of family, work, military,
> hospital, leisure, etc. In the latter, all social spaces are
> connected—one does not have to leave one space before entering the
> other space. One can be in all of them all the time—with the help of
> technology--we work at home and on vacation. Surveillance existed only
> within each separated space in discipline society (in military, in
> jail, in hospital). Once you left the ‘prison,’ you were out. Now,
> there is not any outside to surveillance space. Since 911 this kind of
> controlled social space is pronounced, legislated, and normalized in
> our daily life. Scenes that were found only in the ‘3rd world’
> countries are now accepted here by most-—militarized social space and
> glorification of it in public by government and the media.
>
>  
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> But all of this brings resistance and opposition too—though less
> visible so far.
>
>  
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> On the positive side of this spatial experiment with classroom,
> students seemed to like their mobility, access to the teacher in their
> visual fields, and ability to cluster and work together.
>
>  
>
> 'It is much better than other classrooms, the chairs are better, you
> can spin around and see the teacher…  'It is also much more fun. We
> get the boards down all the time and work together… This has made
> maths much more fun than it used to be.'
>
>  
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> Jay mentioned:
>
> “I'm all for experimentation in learning environment design, even this
> one, but there is also the matter of evaluating the results of the
> experiment critically, and comparing alternative designs.”
>
>  
>
> Coming from the evaluation field, I am for experimentation and
> evaluation of the design along the issues suggested by Jay such as
> “control, information delivery, dialogue, inquiry, curricular
> authority, …”
>
>  
>
> To me, the criteria by which to judge a social space such as a
> classroom begins with the degree of presence (or absence) of a ‘trust
> space.’ The kind of social space is spatializing and producing
> relationships of trust. That is a space that projects symmetry of
> mutual relationships similar to the social space that spatializes
> friendship and dialogue.  A learning environment in this way becomes
> the opposite of jail space— the spatialized (and spatializing)
> complete asymmetrical power relationships of order and obedience (eg,
> Abu Gharaib).
>
>  
>
> Finally, Jay said: “No amount of good design is going to save a
> fundamentally dysfunctional institution.” Put differently, a produced
> physical space can only support or hinder the kind of social activity
> that goes inside it. It is the social activity itself that is the
> dominant spatializing force that overrides the already built
> environments and creates its own space(functional/dysfunctional).
> Space is both producing and produced, it is both produced and
> destroyed.
>
>  
>
> Thanks to Phil for ‘spatializing’ XMCA, even for a few moments –posts!
>
>  
>
> iraj imam
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>
> The Center for Applied Local Research
>
> 5200 Huntington Ave., Suite 200  Richmond, CA  94804
>
> Telephone: (510) 558-7932  FAX: (510) 558-7940
>
> e-mail: iimam@cal-research.org 
>
> Web:  www.cal-research.org
>
>  
>
> "The defence of free speech begins at the point when people say
> something you can’t stand. If you can’t defend their right to say it,
> then you don’t believe in free speech." Salman Rushdie, 7/2/2005
>
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