Re: What's new in classroom configurations

From: Mike Cole (lchcmike@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Feb 28 2005 - 17:23:46 PST


Remember, failure is a systemic feature of schooling as well.
I am glad Iraj moved in with his geographical sensibility. The
arrangement of space
*can* make a difference if it is designed to enable new modes of
interaction. But one of the few laws of communication is that new
media start out as intensification of the potentialities of the old.

Why do I have the feeling that we are moving backward in time/practice
in the educational domain? Age-induced vertigo or verisimilitude?
mike

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:50:40 -0800, IRAJ IMAM <iimam@cal-research.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Phil posted The Observer, Sunday February 27, 2005
>
>
>
> "A new teaching system, revolutionary in more than one sense, has been
>
> developed and tested in secret."
>
>
>
> 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….
>
>
>
> This classroom works so well because the racetrack around the room means
> there is no back of the class…
>
>
>
> 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)?
>
>
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> But all of this brings resistance and opposition too—though less visible so
> far.
>
>
>
> 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.'
>
>
>
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 01 2005 - 01:00:04 PST