A school tries to change: How leaders and teachers understand changes to space and practices in a UK secondary school

Abstract

This article considers a school community initiating change in pedagogical practices to complement newbuild premises in the context of demands for school improvement, but constraints on autonomy. We investigate how school leaders planned the change towards enquiry-based learning in flexible spaces, and how teaching staff prepared for the coming change. We worked with teachers to explore current experiences of teaching and learning in self-contained classrooms where teachers mainly teach alone, and anticipations for the new building, where there will be large, shared spaces, facilitating movement and different groupings of students, encouraging student autonomy and teacher teamwork. Preparation for change was centred on an 'experimental week' of enquiry learning that took place in an existing large space (a school hall). Here we explore the experiences of the teachers involved, particularly their ideas about the potential for changing practices, considering these in light of the plans of the school leaders and of wider understandings of school change. We met the teachers before and after the experimental week, observed the week and conducted interviews mediated by photographs of the week. The tensions and stresses of attempting to make extensive changes to teaching practices were evident, together with suggestions that the school leaders were failing to appreciate the complexity of the change they were planning or to communicate the ideas about it that they had developed. The probable consequences for the school, given the uneven distribution of autonomy in UK schools, are briefly considered.

Pupils as active participants: Diamond ranking as a tool to investigate pupils’ experiences of classroom practices

“…Diamond ranking worked well as a tool that expressed critical voices and as an activity that encouraged discussion between pupils. Compared to former studies (for example, Clark, 2012;Clark et al, 2013;Lee and Tan, 2013;Woolner, 2010Woolner, , 2012Woolner, , 2014, in this research, the pupils were able to construct the diamond 9s by choosing from 165 photographs. The scheduling of the data-gathering during the normal school day was convenient for the participants.…”

Structural change from physical foundations: The role of the environment in enacting school change

“…Such a whole school approach was taken by a secondary school we worked with, as they prepared to move into a new building that was specifically designed to facilitate an interdisciplinary, enquiry-based approach to learning through provision of flexible spaces for team teaching. We have documented the process of initiating change in detail previously (Woolner et al 2012a(Woolner et al , 2014.…”

“…It seems clear that the revolution in educational culture and teacher practices desired by the leadership team and which the new building was meant to support and encourage did not occur. From the Ofsted reports it seems that rather than embedding changed educational practices, the new space was simply making traditional practices more awkward (see Woolner et al 2014).…”

Learning spaces and pedagogic change: envisioned, enacted and experienced

“…Significant pedagogic issues are raised here and relate to other reported experiences and previous research (Saltmarsh et al 2015;Woolner et al 2014). In comparison with the patterns that formed in the school leader and student data sets, there is greater variability in the responses made by teachers to using new designs of learning environments and effecting change.…”