ABSTRACT
Reflective teachers are likely to be concerned about the quality of the learning environment within their school and will aim to maximize the learning potential of the building and space which they have available. 36
A lack of facilities can severely limit curriculum activities. If the classroom environment does not have quiet spaces for reading, or is badly ventilated, there is very little the class teacher can do to remedy the situation. However, there are ways in which imaginative teachers can optimize a poor classroom environment, even if this requires adapting their own teaching methods to suit the needs of the space. One 68teacher I met had arranged for full height doorwindows to replace the existing high-silled windows. She organized the immediate outside space to be a garden. It was, she said, like her own lounge and garden at home, which made it more comfortable for her as an environment in which to teach. However, this type of direct action is unusual within most UK state schools. Neutra's experimental school of 1935, Corona School, Bell, Los Angeles. Due to its radical open-plan form, when it was completed some parents described it variously as a drive-in market, a hangar or a penthouse on Mars. Neutra explained: ‘The old time listening school where children were taught in an academic way could get along well with fixed sitting arrangements and with desks screwed to the floor. The teacher faced the pupils and poured instruction into them. Now the teacher has become an active member of the group who works freely around the classroom, constructs, sews, dyes, handles all the material and tools with the children …' From W. Boesiger’s Richard Neutra Buildings and Projects, edition Girsberger, Zurich, 1951, p. 150. This image was published in The New Architecture, 1st ed., edited by Alfred Roth, edition Girsberger, Zurich, 1940, p. 109. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780080499291/f70b01ec-99da-4e86-a882-bbb9f643b2de/content/fig2_11_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (Photo: © Alfred Roth New Architecture.)
The importance of ICT within the classroom has been touched upon. As I write, however, of the 25,000 state maintained schools in England and Wales, the current pupil to computer ratio is 19:1. In secondary schools it is 9:1; however, 75 per cent of the machines in schools are over five years old. This problem is compounded by the fact that around 70 per cent of teachers have received no training in ICT. Computers and communications technology are rightly central to the government’s drive to raise standards in the classroom. This makes no sense unless enough pupils have access to the machines and software which will enable them to exploit the National Grid for Learning, and other resources available on the Internet.
Since the UK Education Reform Act was introduced in 1988, there has been a period of continuous demand, pressure and change on schools and their teachers. It has to be concluded that the views of children were largely ignored during this time. Most of the focus centred on the content of the curriculum. The development of children as 69people was neglected. It is important for teachers to listen to children and for children to listen to each other. As stated in the introduction, special needs require special spaces. Every child, to a greater or lesser extent, has special needs, one of which is to be heard. Increasingly there will be a requirement for social and educational priorities within schools to recognize the rights of the individual child within the classroom, as well as the overall standing of the class group in relation to the institution’s standing in the educational attainment league tables.
It is conceivable that the pressures of the National Curriculum will draw attention away from a more holistic view of children’s development. On the continent, emphasis continues to be placed upon group and collaborative methods, particularly during the early years. Teachers are given advice as to the use of space within the school, to aid and broaden the field of learning. Within the UK, the emphasis is increasingly on pencil and paper tests. To reiterate, there is little advice at teacher training level as how best to use the facilities and spaces of the classroom. The trainee teacher is told how and what to teach yet little or no attention is paid to the context within which this takes place.
Whilst the excesses of child-centred pedagogy have matured into a richer and perhaps more complex educational form, it is clear that the continued development of the National Curriculum will be made on the understanding that no child’s potential is fixed: ‘Ensuring equality of opportunity in the classroom will continue to require imaginative solutions, where the best developments of the past years in cooperative teaching and learning strategies, effective communication, and a principled mix of whole class, flexible groupings, pair and individual work, are supported and improved.’ 37 The classroom environment is an essential partner in this task. The classroom teacher should be encouraged to make the best use of their environment and create an ideal classroom in his or her own image.
