1. Introduction
Traditionally, school buildings have been designed largely to support teacher-centred instruction. However, in Australia, New Zealand and parts of northern Europe, many new learning spaces are being designed to enable a wider range of pedagogies. These may be identified as innovative learning environments (ILEs)
[1].
With an emphasis on the affordances of ILEs, Cleveland
[2] (p. 93) characterised these environments as “learning spaces that provide a greater degree of spatial variation, geographic freedom and access to resources for students and teachers than traditional classrooms”. Subsequently, Imms, Mahat, Byers and Murphy
[3] identified ILEs as the product of innovative space designs and innovative teaching and learning practices, highlighting the importance of relations between space and behaviour. This and related discourse
[4][5] reveals parallels with Gibson’s
[6] affordance theory—which describes the complementarity of the environment and user in perceiving a range of action possibilities—and indicates developing recognition in the literature that learning spaces and pedagogies are intrinsically linked.
Analysing the relationships between architectural spaces and pedagogical practices is salient at a time when educational objectives are being reviewed in schools around the world amidst shifting economic, political, cultural and social agendas. For example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has promoted innovative learning environments
[1] and innovative learning systems
[7] as key components of reforms needed to support learners to thrive in the 21st century. Concurrently, educators of global influence have promoted the need for change, particularly with respect to pedagogies aimed at supporting 21st century skills development. Fullan and Langworthy
[8] and Fullan, Quinn and McEachen
[9] advocated for ‘deep learning’ climates that may help generate new relationships with and between learners, their families, communities and teachers and that deepen human desire to connect with others to do good—contributing to the development of the skills needed to thrive in a modern world.
Monahan’s
[10] ‘built pedagogy’ construct has also aided recent interpretations of space–pedagogy relationships. He suggested that, throughout history, the creation of school spaces has been closely aligned with educational philosophies. He commented that:
“Architects, educational philosophers and teachers know well the force that spatial configurations exert on people—how they shape what actions are possible, practical, or even conceivable. Because space constrains certain actions and affords others, the design and layout of space teaches us about our proper roles and places in society”
The concept of ‘affordances’ was coined by James Gibson in the 1970s. Since then, his theory that the environment may offer ‘the animal’ a range of ‘action possibilities’ has been applied and re/interpreted by researchers from varying fields. Commonly, these have included psychology
[6][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], technology/Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) design
[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and anthropology
[32].
However, prior to Gibson’s development of the term and theory of ‘affordances’, the principles behind the theory can be recognised in the approaches of school architects: principally Herman Hertzberger
[33][34], who promoted school typologies that varied from traditional classroom designs to enable more diverse pedagogical practices. In 1969, Hertzberger
[33] specifically discussed relationships between ‘users’ and ‘things’ when describing his approach to the architectural design of the innovative Montessori Primary School in Delft. He wrote:
“The aim of the architecture is then to reach the situation where everyone’s identity is optimal, and because user and thing affirm each other, make each other more themselves, the problem is to find the right conditioning for each thing. It is a question of the right articulation, that things and people offer each other. Form makes itself, and that is less a question of invention than of listening well to what person and thing want to be”
The discourse generated by Hertzberger
[33] about the relationships between the environment and users reveals synergies with Gibson’s later descriptions of affordances, including his most cited definition found in
The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception [6]:
“The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment”
Researchers critically reviews the body of literature on affordances as it relates to the design and pedagogical inhabitation of school buildings. In doing so, links between education, architectural design and affordance theory are explored within the context of shifting perspectives on what constitutes effective teaching and learning practices in schools.
By critiquing applications of affordance theory conducted by researchers from varying disciplines, contested ideas surrounding the theory are highlighted, including varying and sometimes contradictory interpretations of Gibson’s original concept
[27][29][35]. Opportunities for applying Gibson’s theory to develop new insights into the relationships between space and pedagogy are also discussed, offering a foundation for future research into the action possibilities of learning spaces for school teachers and students.
2. Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs)
Formal schooling, was established in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based on a subject-focused curriculum delivered didactically in traditional classrooms
[36]. Since then, school buildings have largely been designed to reflect and enable teacher-centred instruction. However, many newer learning spaces, as may be identified as ILEs, are being designed to enable a wider range of pedagogies
[37].
Intended to enable a shift from teacher-centred instruction to student-centred learning
[1][38][39], the pedagogies within these new socio-spatial environments are anticipated to feature collaborative, participatory, and agentic teaching and learning approaches that may help engage students as “active participants in their own learning”
[40] (p. 74) and “encourage and enable students to learn in ways that allow them to attain their personal academic and social potential”
[41] (p. 65).
Physically, ILEs often exhibit an array of different spaces, learning materials and ways for people to interact with each other
[40]. To illustrate the distinction between traditional classrooms and ILEs, the images below depict a small secondary school building that was re-developed into an ILE at a school in Sydney, Australia. The re-development transformed a 1980s classroom block into an ILE featuring a variety of interconnected learning spaces or settings, each expected to afford different modes of teaching and learning(
Figure 1).
Figure 1. A range of settings to accommodate different teaching and learning modes, and activities
This new environment at the school can accommodate up the 75 students (equivalent to three classes, as opposed to the original four) and provides opportunities for the collaborative teaching of multiple classes. The building features zones for large group gatherings and explicit teaching as well as smaller areas for small group and independent work. Spaces include writeable surfaces (walls and table-tops) that enable students to work in groups and to share their thinking. A range of setting types, including tiered seating areas, settings defined by high tables, booth seating areas and a boardroom-style space, provide students with options to pursue varied learning activities.
As shown in this example, ILEs tend to be rich with affordances for learning. However, research suggests that these may not be well understood generally by designers or teachers
[42][43]. Therefore, whilst there is widespread understanding about how traditional classrooms ‘work’, it appears that there is not common understandings about the pedagogical possibilities of ILEs
[42].
Insights into the relationships between the environment and user may be considered central to how learning environments are perceived and productively used (inhabited). When writing about Gibson’s ideas about perception in
Anthropology and/as education, Ingold
[44] (p. 31) stated that “the perceptual system of the skilled practitioner resonates with the properties of the environment”. He suggested that an ‘education of attention’ may be undertaken as educators notice and “respond fluently to environmental variations and to the parametric invariants that underwrite them” (p. 31). As such, understandings about affordances and how they relate to school design and educational practice is needed in support of effective teaching and learning. Adopting an affordance-based approach to design is likely to help generate shared understandings between architects and users, aiding in the creation of spaces that are not only well-designed but also well-used in practice.