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In this qualitative study, the authors examined how care was enacted, understood, and valued by teachers and students in nine ninth-grade English language arts classrooms. Following two yearlong cohorts of teachers, the authors explored sociopolitical interpretations of care, specifically focusing on how care was an everyday, political phenomenon in the classrooms. Drawing on observations, teacher and student surveys and interviews, and students' multimodal compositions and artifacts, the authors analyzed glimmers of affect within and across classrooms. The authors framed their findings around two vignettes to illustrate how clusters of analytic glimmers revealed three dimensions of political, everyday care in the classrooms. First, care was shaped by the structures of space and pedagogy in classrooms, such as the requirements imposed on student composition. Second, the manipulation of the actual space of classrooms--the positioning of desks and bodies--shaped care. Finally, the materiality and modality of student production in classrooms highlighted both the platforms on which students demonstrated forms of care and the authoring decisions they made. The authors conclude with specific suggestions for using glimmers as a methodological approach in other affective studies and for designing classrooms that provide avenues for students to shape the enactments of care in classrooms.

The authors examined how the spaces and structures of literacy classrooms were organized, inhabited, and felt by teachers and students in a new project-based high school. The authors attended specifically to the political valence of these feelings: how educators characterized certain spatial arrangements (modular furniture and flexible seating) and curricular structures (asynchronous learning) as feeling democratic, in contrast to an authoritarianism that they associated with other instructional orders. The authors recognized that these descriptors, more than mere metaphors, were expressions of affective attachments that conditioned the classrooms that literacy educators worked to build--what the authors call affective imaginaries. These imaginaries, the authors argue, have material consequences both for how educators shape the world of the literacy classroom and for what practices are sanctioned, celebrated, and undermined therein. The authors drew from a three-year immersive ethnography in an urban public school to explore how educators imagined and shaped democratic literacy classrooms, how students worked within and against these imaginaries, and how resulting frictions impacted literacy learning in these classroom-worlds. Findings center on two interrelated tensions: (1) how infrastructures associated with democratic classrooms, at times, worked against other infrastructures on which students depended for literacy practice; and (2) how these incongruities led to new ways of surveilling students' autonomy in their literacy learning. The authors conclude by considering how these findings might guide literacy educators not only in attending to the ostensive, normative, and performative dimensions of affective imaginaries in classrooms but also in opening alternate imaginaries, better attuned to the equitable flourishing of all students.

This article seeks to explore the metaphor 'darkness and light' and its relevance to education through hauntological study. It draws on the ideas of Derrida and Fisher to reveal that the metaphor functions in binary form and holds significations of truth, goodness and knowledge to subordinate oppositional ideas of darkness. Despite the everyday usage of this metaphor, the subordination of darkness is shown to be less positive than it would appear. Darkness and light also shows itself to be an archetypal metaphor, meaning that it is founded in our depth-experiences of the world and is applicable in many varied contexts, therefore granting it a power to remain in everyday usage. The archetypal nature of this metaphor is uncovered through its utilisation in Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave', thus opening a discussion about how it continues to haunt education today. Broadly, it is the faith in the supposed betterment available through education that is exposed. Finally, in a Derridean manner, this article explores how the metaphor of darkness and light could be overturned in relation to education, thus destabilising a foundational metaphor on which education currently lies.

An historical commitment to child-centred pedagogy notwithstanding, classrooms for an increasing diversity of young people are constituted by their constrained affordances for learning; a single teacher, configurations of tables and chairs, and digital resources. The remit of teaching in such confines perpetuates passivity, a one size fits all approach, and variations of twenty 'somethings', complimenting testing as evidence of learning. This article draws from a critical ethnographic case study in a mainstream primary school of an appropriated space, one of detournement (Lefebvre, H. 1974. "The Production of Space." Oxford, UK: Blackwell.) from classroom to Studio -- a maker-space, and contemplates how the pedagogical diversity afforded by the altered space and its operations, contributed to inclusivity at the site. Ecological psychology, a theoretical tool to better understand the mutuality of person and place, is utilised to analyse and explain how this repurposed classroom and its altered pedagogy flipped notions of success, causing parallaxes of competence. The implications of these findings include not only evidence of the need to pursue the diversification of pedagogical approaches that support learning in schools, but also the need for further consideration to how success might benefit from locally agreed outcomes that consider place-resonance. This research particularly contributes to a research gap that exists to specify exactly how child-centred pedagogy supports a more inherently inclusive school.

In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the impetus to create open learning spaces that afford spatial and pedagogical flexibility have disrupted the nature of teachers' work. In redesigned education facilities, teachers engage in sophisticated processes of collaboration and ongoing teacher professional learning. Moving from traditional classroom designs brings with it a shift in how knowledge is transmitted, co-produced and engaging with aspirational pedagogy and attending to the power dynamics of students and teachers and teachers as co-collaborators. Using a patchwork metaphor to frame our methodological approach, examples from research projects into teachers' work from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia addresses the question: "What is involved in high-quality teacher collaboration in Innovative Learning Environments?" This patchwork of practice is intended to support the work of those charged with researching, reviewing and enhancing collaboration in ILEs. Specifically, dimensions of alignment, acculturation, adaptation, aspiration and agency can inform teacher professional learning and development. By examining the complex conditions of ILEs in a range of projects, where teachers are no longer alone in teaching but contribute to both short-lived and sustained collaborations, we identify examples from research that illustrate new teaching realities in ILEs, and frame possibilities for action.

The physical environment in early childhood education and care is crucial. This paper examines the Swedish government's vision of preschool design in the welfare state of the 1970s and the conceptions of children and society upon which it was based. Presenting an investigation of reports, booklets, and study materials published by various branches of the central government, this paper analyses an ambitious preschool design intended to provide children with a diverse and stimulating environment that supported their independence and freedom of choice. Unlike similar designs in postwar Europe, this preschool design was not formulated in response to the experiences of the world wars. Inspired by the theories of Piaget and Erikson and based on the rationality of the Swedish welfare state, this preschool design was instead intended to remedy the shortcomings of a perceived anonymous, sterile and barren modern society. In relation to existing research, this paper contributes to the study of the so-called nursery heritage by examining how it was formulated in the setting of the Swedish welfare state. In so doing, the paper also provides ample ground for a continued critical discussion on contemporary strands of neoliberal preschool design.

This article studies the invention of the classroom in a time of crisis -- the one experienced after the independence war and in the framework of the Republic of Colombia building process (1819-1830). At that time, the expectations about the future were greater than the experiences about the past and there was confidence about the role of education in the process of transformation of the former vassal into Republican citizen. At that time, school practices were followed into the classroom that sought the distribution of the bodies in the classroom, the planning and synchronisation of the times in which the children were in school. The aim of all these school educational practices was the constitution of a republican citizen: disciplined, adherent to the norms, times, and instructions, and who recognised his place in a highly hierarchical society.

Independent work and silent classrooms appear to be part of a wider discourse adopted by some schools across England and promoted as good practice by England's Education Secretary. This paper explores the effect of grouped and individual seating on the engagement of four boys in small group sessions teaching the English Language GCSE. Observations show how behaviour was detrimental when pupils were sat independently and in rows but improved when they were grouped together. The social constructivist elements of learning facilitated by grouped seating helped pupils find English relevant to their own lives and made the lesson more accessible.

We build on identity-based motivation theory to integrate research on in-person and virtual learning environments so that we can articulate which features of virtual learning environments are likely to support or impede learning and identity exploration. Although students experience their identities as stable anchors for meaning-making and action, they construct what their identities mean in contexts. How students respond to the difficulties they encounter in their learning environment depends on whether they see engaging with schoolwork as an identity-congruent "us" or "me" thing to do. When engagement feels identity-congruent, students interpret the difficulties they encounter as signs of task importance. This interpretation fosters further engagement. When engagement does not feel identity-congruent, students interpret their difficulties as meaning that the task is not for them and disengage. Accessible norms about how learning works further influence these interpretations. Learning takes time and requires opportunities for active retrieval and use in novel settings. Hence, learning often feels difficult. Unfortunately, learning environments often convey that learning should feel easy and happen quickly. Learning environments conveying learn-through-difficulty norms support difficulty-as-importance interpretations. In contrast, learn-with-ease norms foster difficulty-as-impossibility interpretations. We discuss implications for learning, identity exploration, and the design of learning environments of taking an identity-based motivation perspective.

Flexible classrooms are designed to support active learning through movable tables and chairs that can be rearranged into different layouts and through technology such as wall-mounted monitors and whiteboards. This paper investigates how instructors experienced with active learning use the furniture and technology of a flexible classroom to facilitate active learning. We present a case study of one flexible classroom across courses at different levels of the engineering curriculum, analysing how the instructors used the classroom to implement nine strategies for facilitating active learning. Our findings provide many examples of how the flexible classroom allowed instructors to easily walk around the room and interact with students in a way that better facilitated active learning. The flexible classroom also supported the instructors in developing a routine for active learning and designing activities to better engage students. We conclude by describing evidence-based recommendations for flexible classroom professional development informed by our analyses.

COVID-19 forced universities to engage in rapid improvisation and adoption of online learning and teaching. This paper explores "real-time blended" learning in which online students are taught simultaneously with students who are experiencing proximate learning. Two cliques could develop with those learning online becoming observers rather than participants in an active learning process. This paper is based on action-based research to develop an inclusive approach to simultaneous teaching of proximate and online students. This approach includes alterations in classroom layout, the equipment used, facilitating varying modes of social interaction and the role of communication. Effective teaching requires continual minor modifications to teaching design and delivery. This represents an ambidextrous approach to teaching in which teachers focus on the immediate co-creation of student experiences, but also identify cues which are used to adjust the ways in which they engage with a student cohort over the course of delivering a module. Module evaluation becomes an ongoing process in which alterations are made in real-time and to subsequent learning encounters with students. The paper evaluates student performance and concludes that the approach went some way towards ensuring equality of the student experience between those learning online and those proximate with the lecturer.

Although we are constantly making spatial decisions about where to place our objects and ourselves, few studies in psychology have investigated this phenomenon in-depth. In the current study, we examined how spatial decisions are made over time by tracking students' seating choices in classrooms over the course of a semester (i.e., 12 weeks). We found that seating choice became more fixed over time (i.e., a decrease in the distance between seats chosen on adjacent days), though this was disrupted by individuals' time of arrival to class; latecomers often sat further away from where they last sat. We also observed a surprising de-stabilization of this pattern on the last day of class wherein seating choices became more varied. These results suggest that although spatial preference stabilizes over time, this pattern of stabilization may weaken once individuals no longer expect to occupy that space in the future.

Studies in technology-rich learning environments have reported positive outcomes of active learning when compared to the traditional didactic classroom; others have found no benefits or have found interruption to learning due to the distraction of the technology. Evidence is required to support effective technology spaces that promote professional preparation, engagement and learning transfer. The impact of a technology-enabled collaboration studio on facilitating team-based learning for professional preparation through a case study in biomedical sciences was explored using a mixed method approach. Explicit assessment items as objective measures of student learning outcomes and implicit subjective, self-reported feelings of engagement and readiness for clinical practice is reported. Quantitative results showed an average 11.8% (p < 0.001; 95% CI 6.6-17.0) improvement in the final examination score for those students who had content delivered in the collaborative environment compared to a standard classroom. Qualitative results also support the notion that engagement and learning was enhanced. Investment towards a technology-enabled collaboration studio has shown a contributory effect that improves final grade outcomes through increased engagement, communication, motivation and professionalism for the learner. This research informs guidelines for best practice in active learning environments, particularly in purpose-built high technology learning spaces.

This article explores the take-up and imaginaries of open-plan schooling during the 1970s, drawing on examples from Denmark and Victoria (Australia). As well as expressing new forms of classroom design and pedagogical praxis, open plan classrooms stood for reimagining schooling as a social institution and to possibilities for remaking student and teacher subjectivities. As a thoroughly transnational concept, the open-plan ethos was entwined with broader processes of social-cultural and political change and suffused with a critical optimism in its potential to inaugurate powerful transformations that extended beyond classrooms. We explore these aspects of open-plan schooling through Levitas´s (2013) typology of modes of utopia and Cooper´s (2013) concept of 'everyday utopias', arguing for closer attention to the decisive role of mundane practices in navigating what is 'doable and viable' in how open-plan classrooms were planned and enacted while also being attuned to a vision of another future. To analyse the interweaving of national, local and transnational processes in the making of open-plan ideas and practices, we draw upon Ingold´s (2011) notion of 'meshwork', proposing that local enactments of open-plan schools fold back into and contribute to building up different (transnational) conceptions of the open plan.

This article seeks to examine the neglected sociomateriality of the classroom and investigates how space, matter and human actors are entangled, interact and take part in the 'space-producing action'. Rather than approaching the classroom as an objective collection of physical units or a stable grid, we see it as something alive, a performance which can only be understood from inside the classroom. To gain insight into the ongoing constitution of the classroom, we have written classroom biographies together with nine primary school teachers. A first analysis of these rich biographies reveals the permanent interplay of human and non-human actors and their multidimensional relationships, from a new teaching aid urging the teacher to resort to traditional classroom organisation, to the rearrangement of classroom furniture in order to implement a new working method, to the manufacturing of seats from washing powder barrels. All of this reveals the classroom as a 'potential space' -- inviting teachers to become an active part in its spatial constitution and thus allowing classroom ownership.

This article focuses on the schools developed by Mary and David Medd within the Ministry of Education in Great Britain, 1949-1976. Their main contribution to the field of Educational Architecture was the definition of a design strategy known as "Built-in variety," where the self-contained classrooms ("empty-box-school") disappeared in favour of a variety of dissimilar places. Indeed, the Medds sustained a very innovative view from which primary educational architecture was profoundly reconceptualised, getting closer to a "home" than to an institution. Actually, the paper argues that it was precisely this driving principle -- school "as a home" -- that was responsible for the dismantlement of the traditional school types. This article proposes a close look into the design process as an object of study in its own right, in search for the underlying principles of the Medds' primary school designs. The acknowledgement of some features of the English house has been a good means of coming to understand the Medds' strategy and its domestic "aura," for the schools' spatial hierarchy recalls the internal spatial structure of Arts and Crafts houses of the late nineteenth century.

Multiage, child-size, and accessible, the Montessori classroom provides a prepared environment that maximizes self-regulated activity. Designed to be intuitive and conducive to children's development at multiple developmental planes, the classroom nurtures each child's growing independence. Ideally, the principles underlying the Montessori philosophy of educating children-- themes of self-discovery, responsibility for learning, community and diversity, and respect for the natural world--shape the design of each Montessori school's site, buildings, and classrooms. Despite each school's individual character, those principles ensure a Montessori environment is easily recognizable (and functional), no matter its location. For Montessori school leaders and other stakeholders who are considering a new building, classroom, or other physical space, a marriage of design principles and Montessori philosophy is vital. This article will offer tips on achieving that marriage, based on years of experience the architecture firm, StudioMB, has working with different Montessori schools. This article can help assess current space to see if some simple changes can strengthen the effect of the Montessori environment.

This paper maps a teacher's pedagogic practices when teaching young children to produce texts using digital technologies during a literacy lesson for 7-8 year-old children. Pedagogies are broadly understood as what the teacher does in a classroom to facilitate learning in a twenty-first century classroom. The paper argues that the very notion of pedagogy places the teacher at the centre of learning practices, more so than other aspects of teaching such as the curriculum and assessment, which are heavily regulated by policy. Underpinned by understandings of sociomaterial assemblages, incorporating the material and the spatial, data were collected using time-lapse photography, classroom observations and field notes including classroom floor plans. The findings of a frame-by-frame analysis of the time-lapse photographs are reported through the three interconnected concepts of pedagogy, space and materials. The paper concludes by suggesting that an understanding of the material and spatial entanglements in a classroom through a mapping of pedagogies augments current knowledge, enabling a fresh understanding of teaching literacy and how young children learn to write as twenty-first century learners as children enact their journey of becoming-writer.

The places where high school teachers teach have a relationship with what and how their students learn. Certain aspects of the physical environment have been examined for decades, such as those that affect basic physiological needs including but not limited to climate control, air quality, appropriate lighting, and cleanliness. In addition to these needs, it is important to examine learning spaces in light of the changing pedagogies that teachers are being encouraged to employ with this current generation of students. Pedagogies are continually being added to and adapted; however, improvements in the physical environment are not always considered components of these curriculum adjustments. Without the proper facilities, teachers are limited in the pedagogical techniques they can utilize. As teachers are being required to differentiate teaching strategies, they need to be provided with the appropriate resources, including the most effective physical environments and classroom layouts and the training to use those spaces effectively. Continued studies are necessary to elucidate evidence for those aspects of the physical learning environment that are most effective for aiding in 21st century learning.

Desk arrangements in primary classrooms can encourage or negatively influence learning. With no previous research reporting on student perspectives, we explored perceptions of two common desk configurations (Year 3, n=32, mean age=8 years). Qualitative data were collected by means of open-ended questionnaire, with an even spread of most preferred desk arrangements (n=16 Clusters, and n=14 Traditional Rows. Clusters were preferred for "increased interaction with friends", clearer view of the board" and "ease of movement/easier to get out of my seat". The reasons given for preferring Traditional Rows were "minimisation of peer distractions", "familiarity", "clearer view of board", and "can hear the teacher". Researcher observations were also undertaken during ten normal handwriting lessons (5 observations with Traditional Row configurations in place, and 5 observations during Cluster configurations). We observed fewer off-task behaviours during lessons held with Cluster desk configurations. Students tended to turn around more during lessons with the Traditional Row desk formation in place during completion of an individual task. Future research is needed to illuminate the impact of desk configurations incorporating a greater range of desk formations, larger sample sizes, varying socio-economic groupings, open-plan versus conventional classroom spaces and comparison of diverse technologies, student groups and lessons.

This article examines Innovative Learning Environments (ILE's) in terms of its promise to deliver an inclusive environment. While ILE's underpinning philosophy is to be inclusive for all, it appears that inclusion serves the needs of a wider mainstream audience. The article considers the research in this area critically, with a focus on the inclusive needs of students with disabilities and asks--whose inclusive needs are best served in an ILE context? This article argues that inclusion in an ILE which addresses the needs of students with disabilities has yet to be fully realised, and that an alternative inclusive education (IE) paradigm is required that aligns itself with the new ILE pedagogical environment.

The current work seeks to explore University professors' perspectives on teaching and learning in an innovative classroom characterized by flexible design of space, furniture and technology. The study took place during the 2015-2016 academic year at Fairfield University, a Masters comprehensive university in the Northeastern United States. Qualitative research methods for data collection and analysis were used to gather and summarize professors' perspectives, with specific attention to their integration of technology for instruction and use of teaching strategies. Emergent themes revealed that professors redesigned course work and class time to utilize the innovative technology and space effectively. Results further demonstrated that professors actively integrated multiple types of technology into classroom instruction and used a variety of pedagogies to engage students. Additionally, professors expressed increased satisfaction and motivation for teaching related to ease of instructional technology and flexibility of classroom furniture. Future research is needed to examine how such changes in instructor perspectives might influence paradigm shifts in higher education and impact college student learning.

The New Zealand Ministry of Education encourages schools to update to flexible learning spaces and activate teaching approaches that augment such physical settings. Many schools have embraced the concept of innovative learning environments (ILE) and team teaching, motivating a trend fast gaining popularity in New Zealand primary schools. However, apart from positive self-reporting documentaries from enthusiastic schools, there is a dearth of New Zealand-based information available to assist prospective schools to consider the complexities of adopting this trend. As they venture "out of the single-classroom closet" into a collaborative "community of learners", the staff of one primary school in the Bay of Plenty has been researching their own ILE practices and processes through inquiry, regular appraisal and self-review monitoring. While the school's experience is contextual and unique to its own specific situation and community, it provides a representation of some affordances and constraints that other schools might contemplate when they similarly venture into ILEs.

This paper examines the effect of the architectural layout of two classrooms (one flexible and one less-flexible) on Teaching Assistants' (TAs) movement and interactions with students. Four TAs from a first-year undergraduate introductory course were chosen for the two studies. In study 1, the TAs taught the same lesson twice to two groups of students on the same day but in different classrooms, thereby controlling for content differences. Study 2 investigated the impacts that flexible and non-flexible spaces have on the same cohort of students, as the TAs continued to teach the same students but the students switched classrooms for the second half of the course, thereby controlling for differences in student participants. From the video analyses, there was a clear difference in how the TAs moved in the classroom and the interactions they had with students. Both TAs and students reported in surveys that there was a difference in their movement in the respective rooms that had an impact on their teaching and learning quality. This finding starts the conversation on how space can affect TAs, in order for TAs to consider how their movement is affected by classroom configurations, and how this change in movement can affect teaching strategies and impact their students' learning

Designing physical learning environments that connect to indicators of effective educational practice reflects a university's pedagogical commitment to student success. This article describes an approach to teaching and learning space design based on research-informed pedagogical principles successfully implemented at our university. It then articulates and provides examples of how those principles can be translated into classroom design features. These principles have had an operational and conceptual impact on campus, providing a framework for diverse audiences to think about spaces in a way that reflects shared goals, language and values.

This study sought to explore how the design of both physical and virtual learning spaces influence student dialogue in a modern university. Qualitative analysis of the learning spaces in an undergraduate liberal arts program was conducted. Interview and focus group data from students and faculty, in addition to classroom observations, resulted in the finding that the program's learning spaces empowered students to engage in dialogue, so much so that they occasionally wished to disengage. While this study found support for the idea that both physical and virtual learning spaces can positively influence student dialogue, findings also suggest that the role and purpose of virtual learning spaces (e.g., use of educational technologies) needs to be more intentionally designed and communicated to students. Recommendations and suggestions for future research are provided.

For this case study, the author describes the successful collaboration between Michigan Technological University and Herman Miller in the creation of a learning studio within an emerging learning commons. This recently opened learning studio provides faculty and students a place to develop their level of understanding in active teaching and learning. The case study outlines the room design process and the support structure for faculty.

This article presents the perceptions and experiences of 12 school principals, 35 teachers and 85 students on the influences and processes used by eight Australian government primary and secondary schools to transform traditionally arranged classrooms into flexible learning spaces. Characterised by a variety of furniture and layout options, these spaces are designed to enable a range of learning styles and activities and facilitate student-centred pedagogy. These changes to school learning environments are discussed in light of some central constructs of complexity theory, including inertial momentum, emergence, agent interaction, information flow, feedback loops and lock-in. The findings highlight the role of consultation, participation and ownership as central elements of sustainable change processes. Further effective design and transformation of learning environments requires a reflexive school community, pedagogical shift, professional development, and ongoing support to teachers and students. The discussion emphasizes the sociomaterial interplay between the pedagogical and physical classroom environment.

The term "Classroom Proxemics" refers to how teachers and students use classroom space, and the impact of this and the spatial design on learning and teaching. This study addresses the divide between, on the one hand, substantial work on proxemics based on classroom observations and, on the other hand, emerging work to design automated feedback that helps teachers identify salient patterns in their use of the classroom space. This study documents how digital analytics were designed in service of a senior teacher's practice-based inquiry into classroom proxemics. Indoor positioning data from four teachers were analysed, visualized and used as evidence to compare three distinct learning designs enacted in a physics classroom. This study demonstrates how teachers can make effective use of such visualizations, to gain insight into their classroom practice. This is evidenced by (a) documenting teachers' reflections on visualizations of positioning data, both their own and that of peers and (b) identifying the types of indicator (operationalized as analytical metrics) that foreground the most useful information for teachers to gain insight into their practice.

The purpose of this study was to survey secondary band and orchestra teachers (N = 436) in Colorado and Indiana regarding their self-reported immediacy behaviors, ensemble setups, and use of classroom space when teaching. Immediacy "refers to nonverbal teacher behaviors which increase nonverbal interaction with students and which communicate closeness." Female teachers and teachers of young ensembles reported higher levels of overall immediacy. Among component immediacy behaviors, teachers reported using proximity-related behaviors the least; females reported using proximity behaviors at higher rates than males. The majority of teachers reported using "closed" ensemble setups (i.e., setups that limit teacher movement among students) and remained in these setups for the majority of the school year. Teachers of young ensembles reported greater use of "opened" setups (i.e., setups that help facilitate teacher movement among students). Although teachers reported spending the majority of rehearsal time on the podium, female teachers, teachers of young ensembles, and teachers who used opened setups reported less time on the podium and more time moving among students. Implications for immediacy, ensemble setup, and teacher use of space in music education are discussed.

Environmental factors, personal experience, and social interactions influence the development of teacher candidates' views of teachers' roles in school and society (Rose, Monda-Amaya, & Preast, 2018). This is especially true when we consider the unique needs of each generation of teachers. Ecological systems theory and social cognitive theory frame this study as teacher candidates are the product of their personal experiences and social interactions within an education system that must respond to evolving societal needs. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of two sections of a literacy methods course through the study of reflection journals, survey data, and exit interviews. Themes and patterns were identified within teacher candidates' responses (Glesne, 2011). Findings demonstrated that teacher candidates exhibited concerns and fears for not only their professional growth, but also the academic and emotional development of their students. The research occurred in the context of a Professional Development School (PDS) in an urban setting. The first section of the course identified the site's open classroom layout as a physical safety concern due to the rising prevalence of school violence from internal and external sources. The second section identified support structures for teachers and students that demonstrated a concern for emotional safety. This study highlights the need to recognize teacher candidates' unique generational experiences and their desires for safety and collaboration as part of their professional development as educators.

This article explores the characteristics of a successful transition of a school from traditional classrooms to an innovative learning environment. Many schools today are converting traditional classrooms into spaces which are flexible, supporting a wide array of teaching and learning possibilities (i.e. an 'innovative learning environment'). These schools envision a future in which teaching, culture and space align to result in engaged students achieving deep learning. Many of these schools, however, fail to align teaching practices, organisational structures and leadership with their design's intended vision. This results in a misalignment between the pedagogical goals of the building and its subsequent use. Through case studies of four schools in Australia and New Zealand, this study identifies the commonalities between the schools' independent transitions resulting in four shared characteristics of a successful transition from traditional to innovative learning environments -- Culture, Nudges, Structure and Expectations. Within each characteristic, specific strategies are provided to enable alignment between the design and use of a school building.

The traditional lecture-oriented teaching is still the norm in English as a foreign language education courses, but an innovative teaching model, expedited by recent advances in technology, becomes often popular across non-English-speaking subjects. The new model flips the usual classroom paradigm, in which students learn primary concepts outside classroom and class time is reserved for more active problem-based learning. Discussion of model and its impact are more, on the whole, theory-driven than data-informed to consider qualitative feedback to give context before drawing conclusion. Little research has so far been undertaken to rigorously consider class practitioners' readings on flipped learning experience in EFL discursive contexts in a contrastive manner. In so doing, this study employed a narrative inquiry, using data from interviews and observational field notes. Findings show that that flipped learning is situated practice. The teacher perceived the class challenging due to workload of developing flipped learning materials, inadequate inside-classroom infrastructure, over reliance on student and old-fashioned classroom layout. Likewise, the students found flipped activities time consuming, blaming inadequate outside-classroom infrastructure and teacher's unavailability for flipped outside class activities. Rather, the teacher valued this model strengthening routs towards transparency for students' parents on their educational progress. Students appreciated the ubiquitous, more self-paced and autonomous learning nature of flipped model as it makes them more deeply dive into the content. The findings have ramifications for raising awareness of the flipped learning complexities in learning practice.

Promoting critical science agency (CSA) may be one way to promote educational justice. CSA is using science with other powerful forms of knowledge to address issues of injustice. However, the process of enacting CSA is always embedded within a sociopolitical context, which positions some students with more power than others. Drawing upon a social practice theory analytical lens with a focus on power and using critical participatory ethnography methods, this study investigated the ways middle school students restructured power hierarchies as they worked to complete the design challenge of making their classroom community more sustainable, and how power hierarchy restructuring impacted students' opportunities to enact CSA. Findings show as the students enacted collective CSA, they were responding to unmet students' needs grounded in systems of power operating within their classroom. Throughout the engineering design process, students' understandings of their defined issue of injustice was both refined and critical to their technical and social design considerations. Finally, as the groups enacted CSA, power hierarchy disruptions, though incomplete, through the recognition of students' expertize and distributing roles, supported their efforts to address their class-wide concerns. These findings highlight how restructuring power hierarchies supported youth enacting collective CSA, which then further supported them in reshaping their classroom community to be more justice-oriented.

Disability is a reality in the library instruction classroom, yet despite ratification of the American Library Association (ALA) policy on people with disabilities, librarians seldom take part in discourse about restructuring library instruction to ensure it is inclusive and accessible. This essay discusses the imperative to serve students with disabilities. It also explores how Universal Design for Learning in the library instruction classroom can facilitate multiple forms of representation, expression, and engagement. Importantly, this conversation attempts to center disability within the classroom and to acknowledge the injustices of accommodation and retrofitting for learners with nonstandard abilities.

Resistance to change is a central topic in the study of change management, with resistance by employees often portrayed as an inevitable and undesirable response to planned change that managers must attempt to overcome. While resistance can be detrimental to organizations, it can also be beneficial, by prompting deeper analysis of a change, or by preventing an ill-advised or unethical one. Yet it might be difficult for employees to voice their concerns about change, especially if implemented from the top down, because of the power relationships involved. This simple classroom activity, designed principally for undergraduate classes, simulates an organizational restructure, requiring students to reorganize themselves around the room multiple times on the order of the instructor. It provides an opportunity for students to analyze group dynamics, consider the value of resistance, and discuss how leaders can foster cultures that encourage employees to speak up.

This article explores the affordances provided by altering the way in which a traditional structured classroom is perceived. The article, through an exploration of reconfiguring a classroom space in a drama intervention, outlines the affordances provided to young vulnerable people and the adults that they work with. Such reconfigurations are essential in order to provide vulnerable young people with the means to alter the stereotype that have been assigned to them by others. Equally the reconfiguration is a tool that can equip the adults with the space to better understand the young people and their backgrounds. Together this can allow a differing identity to flourish and provide young vulnerable people with the space to evolve into their true self. Altering or defamiliarisng the space affords a potential relational change for both students and adults.

In this article, Jennifer Jones describes how at Pine Street School in New York City, they have dispensed with the traditional industrial model of schooling and are looking ahead to the future. The entire school was designed with optional learning environments. Jones describes innovative elements from varied seating (floor cushions, modular movable tables, high tables and stools, window nooks) in place of desks to a dynamic teacher-built menu of "interest options" driven by their passions in place of recess. All across the school culture, there is both an overt and a subtle theme of student agency, voice, and choice, which fuels the curriculum and day-to-day interactions among students and between students and teachers. Accompanying this powerful feeling of choice is an expectation for mutually respectful collaboration, encouraging all students from varied international backgrounds to learn to understand and value perspectives that are very different from their own.

Understanding the relationship between innovative learning spaces and teachers' pedagogical and social practices is essential given the increasing investment in innovative learning spaces worldwide. This study examined the socio-spatial practices of a group of teachers at a secondary school in an innovative learning space. Interview responses from 21 teachers revealed that space and social practices co-became through the interplay of the school culture, the physical, social and curriculum structures, and individual teachers' sense-making of the practice. The study found that the cultural and structural systems drove the initial becoming of social practices, and that the individual systems shaped the diversified nature of the becoming. The findings suggest the importance of supporting teachers' sense-making in terms of conceptions of subject teaching, professional identity, the affordances and constraints of the space and confidence in and capacity of constructing and managing effective learning experience in the space, when effecting educational changes with space.

In addition to their pedagogical benefits, active learning classrooms constitute an important topic of research and have renewed debates on the impact of the built environment on education. However, this literature sometimes overlooks the experiences of learners by focusing on the design and practice of teaching in active learning classrooms. The article focuses on learners and asks a question through the reflective style of the Renaissance essay: 'should we prepare students for active learning classrooms?'

We examined the use of an engineering learning cycle (ELC) model and in a course for K-8 inservice teachers for two purposes. First, we were interested in how the ELC would support teachers' science, mathematics, and engineering content knowledge. We were also interested in their confidence in their ability to adapt content for teaching using the cycle. Thirty teachers participated in the course and completed an ELC that contextualized acoustics engineering in a school-based application: the design of classroom spaces. The science of sound, the science and engineering practices (NGSS Lead States, 2013), and the mathematics practices (NGAC & CCSSO, 2010) in the investigation of acoustics were emphasized through the initial stages of the cycle. The application of the concepts and skills of those early stages were then supported in the later stages of the cycle wherein teachers designed (and re-designed) classroom models to meet design criteria. The ELC model, a description of an acoustics engineering professional development experience, and outcomes related to teachers' content knowledge and confidence to adapt it within an ELC are discussed.

We present the findings of a pilot plan of active learning implemented in introductory physics in a Chilean public university. The model is research based as it considered a literature review for adequate selection and design of activities consistent with the levels of students' reasoning skills. The level of scientific reasoning is positively correlated to student success. By contrast to a control group of students following traditional lectures, we observed a significant reduction in failure rate for students that do not yet possess formal scientific reasoning. This profile of students being the majority, we conclude that implementing active learning is particularly suited to the first year of higher education in the context of a developing country. It fits the particularities of student profile and typical classroom size, leading to learning improvement and reduction of academic risk, as well as being financially sound.

Classroom physical environment has been widely researched over the past few decades. In this respect, more recent attention has focused on the provision of structural and symbolic features; however, no study has been conducted to compare the structural and symbolic features of classroom physical environment in English as a foreign language (EFL) elementary learners' classrooms. To this end, 100 EFL elementary learners were recruited to participate in this study. They were assigned to two kinds of classrooms: Classroom A included both structural and symbolic features, but Classroom B only included structural features. The structural features were subsumed into lighting, acoustics, seating, and thermal comfort. The symbolic features were ornamental materials (e.g., posters, colorful balloons, and ropes of English numbers and letters) and two types of classroom layout (i.e., U-shaped and orderly row). The participants were required to complete a 22-item questionnaire with answers that ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The results indicated that both sorts of features seemed to be highly important for elementary learners; however, according to the learners' views, the symbolic features were considered to be of higher importance. The findings also revealed that lack of symbolic features significantly affected learners' opinions about structural features.

Literacy educators have long understood the importance of designing multicultural instruction for students. However, in an educational context that is both increasingly multilingual, literacy educators are not realizing that multiculturalism isn't enough. This article focuses on practitioner friendly recommendations for understanding linguistic diversity in the middle grades, designing physical spaces that support multilingual literacy communities, and designing affective spaces that support multilingual literacy communities. The recommendations in this article rely on data from a qualitative multiple case study to describe the approaches that middle schools recognized as Texas Schools to Watch were used to meet the needs language and literacy needs of their specific English Learner (EL) populations.