Spatialised Practices in ILEs: Pedagogical Transformations and Learner Agency

Abstract

Across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, there is a systematic research and policy impetus for continuous schooling engagement with digital technologies, improvement agendas and the commensurate redesign of educational spaces (OECD in Innovative learning environments, Educational Research and Innovation. OECD Publishing, Paris, 2013). The current epoch marks a transformation between what has been termed the industrial society and the knowledge age. In this article, we consider implications of the shifting currents in globalised societies for school practitioners and how moves to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) (also called new generation learning environments (Imms et al. in Evaluating learning environments. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp. 3–20, 2016) may require close attention if the potential of spatialised practice is to be realised. Innovative learning environments are new generation schooling contexts where space and objects influence and produce spatialised practice. Spatialised practice, in this context, is indicative of a re-examination of classroom relationality. Moreover, it is an embrace of the fluid and flexible redesign of learning spaces alongside ongoing evaluation and reconsideration of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (Blackmore et al. in Innovative learning environments research study. Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria, 2011b). Within ILEs, an engagement with spatialised practice can afford learner agency. Massey (For space. Sage Publications, London, 2005) makes three propositions about space that it is a product of interrelations, a sphere of coexisting heterogeneity and multiplicity, and always in process and under construction. Deploying Massey’s (For space. Sage Publications, London, 2005) three dimensions of space, we consider spatialised relations in schooling settings. Principal interview data are used to illustrate aspects of spatialised practice.