ABSTRACT
Over a century ago, John Dewey railed against ‘the ordinary school room with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order’. In his view, this typical classroom organisation was made for listening and marked ‘the dependency of one mind upon another’ (Dewey 1900:173). If Dewey were to visit many of our classrooms today, he would be disappointed at how little has changed-and yet education reform is high on the political agenda of many countries.
