Maslow & Learning environments

What is the secret of great learning environments and how can we avoid building the same schools over and over again? Well, we might have look at Maslow.

We all know the basic traits of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: how our human needs progress from Physiological needs via Safety, Love/Belonging and Esteem to Self-actualization.  Maslow's theory came to my mind as I compared different learning environment projects. Many of them appeared to have started tend the far ends of the hierarchy and they lacked qualities in the middle. -Well, Love perhaps, but in my middle we find Pedagogy...

Many, if not most, projects focus on Basic needs, in capacity and technical requirements. The driving forces behind these projects are often a strong need to build, and build fast.  There is nothing wrong with these basic requirements, on the contrary, they are necessary in order to create healthy and functional environments. The most notable in the projects professionals in property management, planners, engineers and builders, rather than principals, teachers or designers.

There is just one major flaw with this approach: it doesn’t create any incentives for development or raised pedagogical standards. The final result of projects with this approach: We build the same school as we did last time, with some modifications at slightly higher costs. 

Some projects come from the other end of the hierarchy: Projects motivated by visions or ambitions to design and create a statement. Behind these projects you often find ambitious institutions or municipalities coached by equally ambitious designers or architects. There is nothing wrong with this approach either, schools need visions and should have great design. 

There is only one major flaw with the approach: it will not result in sustainable learning environments. There hasn’t been any real translation from the ambitions and vision to pedagogical practice and leadership. These schools are like fancy ocean liners with a crew lost in translation... These are the kind of schools we tend to rebuild in 2-5 years after their creation, often blaming either designers or teachers (too ”bold” design or ”lack of flexibility/leadership”). 

Great projects (and there are lots of them) seem to have their starting point in the middle of the hierarchy: In pedagogy and ideas of a didactic flow, in concrete ideas about strategies and methods for learning and cooperation. The behind in these project are often a mix: teachers, students, politicians, engineers and designers working together. The challenge is to express the conditions for learning in such a way that it is possible to translate them into basic needs and design. There is often a commitment to some principles or guidelines that make priorities and decisions more coherent. 

There is only one major flaw with this approach: it requires something of us that we mostly don’t do: we we have to express our professional beliefs in a way that makes sense to other professionals and we need to cooperate across disciplines. Other than that, it’s easy!

So, just have a look in your neighborhood, in your city or country: What kind of projects are going on? Or, if you’re in the middle of your own project. where did it start? -Knowing that you might guess where you will end up!

Learning Environments Extraordinaire!

I ran into a cool thing that could have great impact on how we design learning environments at Kinnarps, a Swedish furniture company, in Kinnarp, a minuscule village in Sweden. Kinnarps have created an office environment at their showroom that’s composed of 18 different environments and they invite organisations to come and work in that environment for a day or so... Generous and fine enough but now to the brilliant part: they study HOW you work and WHICH environments you prefer to use. The result is kind of a fingerprint: This is how your office should look like, if if you worked in your preferred environments... Guess what the most popular environment is? -"The Library"a dark blue room with subdued light and persian rugs, not your standard office space...

Just imagine that you did the same exercise with a school (and you really could do that at Kinnarps). Imagine that you offered students and teachers the showroom for a day or a week, what would happen, which spaces and places would be used and which would not be used? Imagine they were offered a couple of classrooms alongside the showroom, how intensely would they be used?

I'm not saying we should have showrooms as schools but I do think that we should consider the connection between the kind of learning we want to take place and the places we choose or create. If given the choice, how would your preferred mix of environments look like? For one: at the showroom i Kinnarp they have a system where employees organize themselves and the working environment within one system. Just imagine this being done in a school: Teachers choosing the right learning environment for the kind of processes and learning the want to promote. -Bye, bye standard schedule!

Another interesting fact: Kinnarps has investigated average rate of utilisation in any office to somewhere between 30-40%. This creates a possibility: you can raise the quality of the working environment by paying less for square meters and put the money into well defined environments suited to your firms particular needs. 

Again, do the trick in a school: What kind of environments would be high in demand IF a school could create and environment that was 100% adapted to their preferred needs and methods? -I mean, the only reason for a school to have an environment with 90% classrooms must be that pedagogy to 90% is built on the assumptions like: of 1 class = one teacher, 25-30 students = a group, ”interaction”=”within a class”, ”teachers=work separately, not in teams”, ”classrooms=multipurpose=neutral and equal design” etc. This should be questioned since it contradicts most of our curricula and the skills we need to promote. Great schools have done this and and we at RAU are supporting some of them. - Great projects coming up soon, and we will keep you posted!

/Ante Runnquist

A model is emerging

A very clear trend is that the issue of learning environment is an increasingly important issue for all involved in learning. But the learning environment must include more perspectives than the spatial and physical house. The psychosocial aspect is just as important and so is the digital environment.

Unfortunately, the fact remains that most people have the physical environment as the primary starting point when talking about the learning environment. It is like it is synonymous with furniture, lamps and paint on the walls, etc. And of course it's important, it's no question about it. But equally important is the course to include psychosocial aspects and methods for learning in itself. The first is namely dependent on the other in a synchronized dance.

Our project is now in a phase where we are trying to find/create a smart model that helps us understand how we address the fact that the learning environment contributes greatly to students' increased learning without questioning the teacher's future role. The teacher's roll,  in our world, will be even more important and even more powerful with consistent support of the learning environment.

If you have ideas or concerns about this area do not hesitate to contact us.

//Fredrik Svensson, RAU