The Spaces That Shape Us
Join us as we explore the profound impact of physical spaces on individuals' lives. Through interviews and expert panels, we unveil the secrets of designing spaces that shape emotions, boost productivity, and enhance overall well-being. Discover the latest trends, innovative designs, and strategies for creating inspiring work environments that foster collaboration, engagement, and work-life balance.
The Spaces That Shape Us
The New Era of Classroom Design: Sustainability, Innovation, and Empowerment
Prepare to reimagine the classroom with our esteemed guests, Jonathan Cooper and Ivan Holding. As experts in designing educational spaces, they offer fascinating insights into a new era of learning environments. Jonathan shares his innovative method of designing more collaborative spaces, while Ivan explores how future-proof educational environments can prepare students for a rapidly evolving world. Together, they discuss the importance of physical spaces in learning, student empowerment, and the need for education to adapt to future job markets.
How do we make learning environments more conducive to the future? Jonathan and Ivan shed light on this question, exploring topics like debunking learning styles, the benefits of peer tutoring, and the importance of outdoor learning. Our conversations extend beyond the traditional, examining the roles of youth mental health and climate change in education. With a shared passion for sustainability in school design, our guests highlight the significance of natural elements and sustainable materials in education spaces.
Join us on this enlightening journey and discover how school design influences learning outcomes. Did you know that creating spaces that reflect students’ values can significantly impact their education? Jonathan and Ivan reveal how, with examples of their work at AW Spaces. They also delve into the benefits of involving students in the design process and share how principles of a circular economy can be implemented in projects. Tune in and be part of this captivating conversation about the intersection of space and education. Get ready to have your perspective expanded on school design and its impact on learning.
Love what you're hearing? Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review!
If you're pondering how to optimize your team's performance and workspace, reach out to one of our workplace strategists at AW Spaces.
This episode is brought to you by Projects, your home for better business. Nestled in the heart of Brighton, with locations in the Lanes and just moments from the Beach, Projects is more than just a space – it's a community. They offer a blend of coworking spaces, dedicated desks, fully serviced offices, meeting areas, event spaces, cafes, bars, and even a gym. And yes, this includes our podcast suite! To experience this unique workspace blend, book a tour or arrange a free trial day via their website. Special Offer: Mention "The Spaces That Shape Us" during booking to avail 25% off on your first podcast suite booking!
Hello and welcome back to the Spaces that Shape Us. Today we are talking about a very interesting topic, something a little bit different from Workspace, which I know all our episodes have been about so far. Today we are delving into the very interesting topic of learning environments. At the AW Spaces we build schools as well as Workspaces. This is something we are incredibly passionate about, particularly around children's education, the intersection of generational changes, cultural shifts and educational strategies. So I am very, very excited to introduce both of my guests today.
Speaker 1:So first of all, we have Jonathan Cooper. During his tenure as the head of a large school in Brighton, he led the institution through two outstanding off-stud inspections, a testament to his exceptional leadership and dedication to educational excellence. His commitment to research, curriculum development and particularly to areas of disadvantage and inclusion, positioned the school as a leading light in the educational authority. Beyond his role at the school, jonathan was also a national leader in education, contributing significantly to the broader educational landscape. His impact extended to being an off-study inspector, where he played a pivotal role in upholding high educational standards across numerous schools. Now in semi-retirement, his journey in education continues as an educational consultant. He also co-leads the R-City our world program, an innovative initiative focused on integrating climate change and sustainability skills into the primary and secondary curriculum. This program represents a vital step in preparing future generations to tackle environmental challenges with knowledge and confidence. So welcome, jonathan, it's great to have you.
Speaker 1:On the other side, we have Ivan Holding. He is the co-founder and managing director of AW Spaces. He has an impressive 20-year career dedicated to building educational spaces, marking him as a true expert in creating environments that are not only innovative but also perfectly tailored for the future of learning. His journey began in 2012 when he launched Action Workspace, and it further evolved into AW Spaces in 2020, a significant milestone marked by Caleb joining as a shareholder in the business. Ivan's passion is evident in every project he undertakes, focusing on designing learning environments that not only support education but also prepare children for their future roles in the workplace. We're very excited to have you here today, ivan.
Speaker 2:Thank you, holly, glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Welcome. Welcome to both of you. So just before we kind of dive into the questions that I'm going to ask you today, I'd just like you to give a little bit of overview as to why this topic is so interesting to you. Obviously it's your entire career. That's the number one answer to that question, but particularly around kind of physical space and learning environments. Over to you, jonathan, first of all, if that's okay.
Speaker 3:Thanks again, holly, for inviting me, because I do think it's a really important aspect of schooling, education in general, and it's something that's been very much overlooked by schools over the years, and I think my fascination comes from looking at the organisation of schools and recognizing that how we organise schools reflects how we see learning, how we see children and childhood, reflects the sort of outcomes we're aiming for in terms of the sort of young people that we want to nurture and foster in education and from, in some respects, a frustration at what I see them in schools at the moment in terms of the lack of imagination about how we organise learning, our low expectations in terms of what we're expecting from learners and it's.
Speaker 3:You know, it seems incredible if you look at a classroom nowadays and looked at classroom 200 years ago, looked at a classroom 2,000 years ago, and you would recognize them as what we'd call classrooms, and very little has changed. Because very little has changed in terms of us requiring from education a very limited output, which essentially is for young people to pass certain exams, have a certain body of knowledge, and the most efficient way of doing that is lining children up and, you know, giving them that knowledge. They're receiving it and then they regurgitate it at the end of the year or something like that. It's, you know, I am really kind of exaggerating there to some extent, but I think it's very sad. And when I looked at my own school and thought, actually, look, we're looking for a totally different approach towards education, we want a totally different relationship with the children, we want to empower them, give them space to learn, etc. Then obviously you have to start investigating the environment in which they're learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the school that you were the had teacher for you did things a little bit differently. Can you give us some examples of that?
Speaker 3:Well, the idea was to really recognize that as a school we were a family of learners together. That actually to remove the sort of hierarchy. Yeah. So it was all first known terms, no uniform. It was very much sort of co-construction of knowledge within the classroom so that, you know, very often we'd start with an inquiry question and the children themselves would bring to the table what they already knew, begin to develop ideas.
Speaker 3:The teacher wasn't at the center of it, the teacher was a facilitator of that learning and very much the children themselves recognized within that classroom there were many, many other experts amongst their peers and very often the children themselves took their learning off in different directions, from ways you didn't expect. But there were, there was. These were ways that were very important to them and very necessary, probably at the point at which they were in their learning. So it was really giving them ownership of their environment, ownership of a behavior. Yeah, I mean, that's our big obsession in schools in England. You know we feel that children can self-regulate, can develop a very positive attitude towards learning if you give them the freedom to actually recognize that they're in control, they've got ownership of it. Yes, they'll make mistakes, but together they can get through those mistakes they can learn how to behave better, etc.
Speaker 3:So actually we did away with rewards, we did away with sanctions, so we just kind of really cleared the ground so that young people began to see that actually they were in charge of their learning, their education, and it became a very exciting and fertile ground, you know, for learning within the school.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. So was there any issues with discipline?
Speaker 2:I guess I know you talked about the kind of reward and sanction model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess with the reward model there's. What's it called? Is it cognitive condition? Was it called?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. It's like Pavloz dog, it's conditioning. Yeah, you do this, we'll give you a sticker yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:I guess there's a lot of evidence to suggest that works. I don't know.
Speaker 3:I mean there's evidence to say it works at that particular moment but the problem is you need a whole drawer of stickers, don't you?
Speaker 3:yeah because basically it won't work and it's the following day necessary unless that sticker is available.
Speaker 3:You know, what we wanted was intrinsic motivation. They did it because it was the right thing to do. Obviously, when we introduced it which is now looking back, is about sort of seven or eight years ago children were affronted by it. They felt, no, why should, why should I have to have the responsibility for kind of regulating my own behavior and making the right choice and knowing when you know, tell me when I'm doing it, tell me when I'm doing well, telling me I'm not doing well, give me a reward for it, and so on. It took a while for the culture to change, but the level then of understanding around the, the consequences of the behavior, the level of the development of compassion and understanding for other people's behaviors, the level of support within the classroom for each other when it was handed over to them just waiting rather than waiting for the teacher to sanction or to reward made a much richer environment and made children who were intrinsically motivated to do the right thing they didn't need something nice at the end of the week or something like that.
Speaker 3:Every at the end of every week we would have reviews of how the week went in terms of our learning development, of our learning attitudes, in terms of issues. Perhaps we did face around behaviors or something like that, but it was very much this idea of discussion and solving together, finding the solutions, because we knew that we had the solutions within us.
Speaker 3:But we give the message to children in schools all the time you haven't got the solutions. We're going to tell you when you're doing the right thing. I'm going to tell you when you're doing the wrong thing, so you don't really need to have to think about it too much yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 1:So, ivan, over to you. Why is this topic so interesting to you?
Speaker 2:the topic has become more and more interesting to me as my children have grown up and have been through and are going through the educational, if you like, period of their lives, although we never stopped learning.
Speaker 2:But seeing them progress, seeing the differences in their personalities and how that's been handled by the school they're at, has been very interesting to me as a parent and is ongoing, and understanding how they're being given the necessary choices in their lives and being treated like adults to allow them to be prepared for the big, wide world as they, as they come out of that period of their lives.
Speaker 2:And so we've seen very much in the workplace how environments are being altered to provide choice for people to make their own assessment about how they should complete what they need to do their tasks.
Speaker 2:And we're seeing that translate into the school environment very much in spaces where learning hubs are becoming more and more prevalent, as opposed to the traditional library where you go and sit quietly. Where a learning hub has a variety of different areas you can work in that give you even different heights you work at, or whether you need a level of comfort, or whether you are wanting to be on your own or whether you want to work in a team, or whether you need silence or whether you need a collaborative environment. So we're seeing that change across education and progressive educational establishments are embracing it and it's proving a delight to our designers and our teams to be able to bring what we're doing in offices. The earlier you can get students to make choices about how they work and giving them the options, the more ready they are as they come into the big, wide world. So, yeah, it translates and, yes, very interesting to me the topic yeah, it's so funny that um works.
Speaker 1:Like you said, schools have looked the same for hundreds of years, haven't they mad? And yet workspace is at the absolute forefront. We've really prioritized adults, which seems ridiculous, because children are about to be the next adults and we're adults, so we can look after ourselves, surely?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I suppose the question to Jonathan is who drives that change and who recognises the need, I think, comes from a recognition from both education and from organisations such as yourself and general sort of businesses about really what sort of young people we need in the world for the future and that will shape the way that we shape our classrooms and we shape the learning within it.
Speaker 3:And we know full well that the world is the old cliché, changing rapidly, isn't it?
Speaker 3:But it's changing even more rapidly now, at the moment, with AI coming on and there are all those facts and figures around 80% of the jobs that the children are going to be having and don't exist at the moment, that AI will take probably 80% of the jobs that we're actually doing at the moment.
Speaker 3:So we are going to need young people who are not passive receivers of education. We are going to need young people who can operate creatively, can organise their own learning, are critical, reflective, ask questions all the time, are incredible, communicators, can digest huge amounts of information and recognise bias and assumptions a whole range of skills that I think we just don't talk about in education. We talk about the GCSEs, we talk about the AI levels and so on. So it needs that sort of shift, it needs a demand from business etc. And it needs government to recognise we need to actually support young people to give them the skills that they're going to need in the future, which need to be these open-ended, creative, imaginative skills that are not being offered at the moment, necessarily all the time.
Speaker 2:And that's very much what children are being taught where they go, that the idea is that they leave able to set themselves an assignment. They set themselves goals, they have a deadline and they go away and create the tasks necessary to achieve those goals and they come back to their boss at the end of that period saying I've done it, I've delivered it. It's not just in the workplace. Where you come into work, you have a boss that's over you all the time and he's saying do you mind going and doing that? You come back and say, well, I've completed that task. Well, thank you very much, neil, could you go and do this? And they come back and say I've done it. It's more like, right, we need this project done. Great, I'm a young person just out of school.
Speaker 2:I've been taught to look at that project holistically, think about what it is that we need to achieve as an end goal. You've told me you want it back in X period of time. I'm going to go away, draw the resources together to achieve that. I've set myself these various tasks that I need doing. I might even break it down into weekly bite size chunks so that I can tick off each week that I've done what I'm building up to the final assignment, if you like, and I can come back at the end of that period. So it's a month and I can go to my boss and say right job done. I've drawn in the necessary resources, I worked at how to do it, I've set some goals, I've achieved it and I'm ready for the next one. So you're not being led all the time. You're able to start leading straight away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you have that ownership and you have, crucially, that purpose which often is not seen by young people in their learning and we talk about that at work constantly.
Speaker 1:purpose yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's vital as a driving force. Otherwise, why are you doing it? Because a teacher told me it's probably not the best response. I'm doing this because they should always be very, very clear about what the purpose is and then what they can bring to the task.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and doesn't it always amaze you how the young people can find knowledge so fast? Yeah, yeah, absolutely it's not just about memory anymore, is it? It's not just about how much you can cram in for an exam. It might be.
Speaker 3:I'm amazed at how much they can find. It's actually my concern is at the moment, because there is so much out there it's have they got the critical faculties to actually take that information and work with it and understand where it's coming from, what the motivation is between the information they found or the emotion it's trying to generate, or whatever? I think as schools, that's one of the key areas we need to work on now is really looking at the use of information and the message within it, so that we're basically we're not learning in blind really.
Speaker 2:So it's the necessary filters, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It's necessary to take what you see and apply your own moral code to that. Your own moral code, your own moral values and an understanding of primarily where it's coming from.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So which I get, I'm not quite sure. At the moment we're at with young people. They are fantastic at finding it.
Speaker 2:They believe it straight away.
Speaker 3:Yes, I find it really hard to generalise too much, but I think, yes, I think I mean adults find it very, very difficult and particularly, to be honest, the sort of information that we look for often is just feeding our own biases anyway.
Speaker 3:so you know you can end up just going down one track. So these are I mean, I just find them really fascinating but also exciting things for education to be looking into, you know, because they are going to make such a difference to young people's lives, as in terms of either making them very active, proactive citizens who care, who have opinions, who can articulate their ideas, can communicate well, or people who are just receivers and regurgitating it and you know AI can do all that receive, regurgitate, da, da, da, da, da, da da. We need people who are a lot more creative and critical in their thinking.
Speaker 1:Very good, so interesting the future. I don't have any children and it's been a while since I was a child, so I'm really so interested in what school is like now. Obviously there was no kind of internet or iPads, or I can't imagine the amount of information that they have to digest. Like you're saying constantly, I feel overwhelmed by information and I'm an adult, so interesting.
Speaker 1:So if we think about kind of the culture of young people now you know there's a lot of conversation around inclusivity and mental health and neurodiversity attention spans. What are the kind of strategies that we're seeing in schools or what we should be seeing in schools to help people with that? Either one of you Maybe, Jonathan?
Speaker 2:first. This is Jonathan's field. Go for it.
Speaker 3:I don't want this to be a grim podcast but, I, think there's nothing wrong with identifying where we're at and where we need to get to, and sometimes you need to wake up.
Speaker 3:I think a bit, don't you? We are in a period the work that I'm doing around climate change, sustainability, I mean it's sort of thrown up and understanding around the disconnect that most people and young people feel in society at the moment as a result of the stresses and strains of life, as a result of social media, etc. Young people and adults themselves are becoming more and more disconnected from themselves through the anxiety and the stress of the strains which are leading to mental health problems, vulnerability around identity, etc. They're disconnected from others, which is leading to inequality in society, social injustice and things like that lack of compassion, more judgments and harder ideas and less tolerance and understanding and appreciation of each other and then also disconnect from nature and the world around them, the planet, which is leading to the issues that we've got around the climate crisis and so on. So they're small problems? No, they are huge problems.
Speaker 1:They are huge problems.
Speaker 3:And you know I don't mean to be flippant, but you know they should be again part of the educational dialogue out there at the moment we are. We know it comes out very clearly. You know, mental health crisis, climate crisis, whatever economic crisis the word crisis is the world of our times now, but we need to be taking some radical decisions about it. In our research into climate change sustainability with schools, we've asked young people what their priorities are and what they think schools' priorities should be. Mental health and climate change is top of their list in terms of what they feel they need to be supportive with and helped within schools at this present moment you know.
Speaker 3:So you know, young people are coming from a place of saying we need some support. We need some help because we recognise this world is very, very complicated and we should be stepping up to the mark now and really supporting them in what they need. So you know they are, they have the skills, they have the ability we need to create an environment in which that can flourish.
Speaker 1:And then. But I suppose on the flip side they're also incredibly vocal about their mental health. Which is a nice shift, I think people are much more honest about how they feel or at the end.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Much more yeah about their mental health, much more willing to talk around identities, you know, much more strong around values and injustice, etc. They're incredible, but that's what we want of the youth isn't it. That's what the youth have hopefully always done.
Speaker 1:Before they get old and bitter, before they get to my age and suddenly get a bit too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is great, which is great to see. I just think you know we need to give them the opportunities to actually explore that more deeply.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And sometimes pressures in school around, as I say, the exam system etc. Perhaps isn't giving them that space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then just thinking about educators, the kind of cultural shifts we've seen amongst educators. So we were talking earlier about the idea of coaching and this coaching role. Let's discuss that a little bit. What are the kind of benefits of that? What are the drawbacks? What's your opinion on a coach rather than a teacher?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me, I've always wanted to see the teacher moving towards sort of facilitation and coaching. You know, in some respects that's perhaps the problem with education you go to extremes, don't you? And that's what we've always done swung one way or another. For me, if you want to actually encourage independence within young people, if you want them to take ownership of their learning, if you want them to be infused, you have to hand it over to them a lot more. You have to give them that power, that engagement, and the fact is they have a lot more freedom and power themselves in terms of, like you say, how they can get hold of information left, right and center, much better than theirs and better than the teachers, and so on. And yet one of the environments that is most restrictive is school.
Speaker 3:But that should be a place in which you say brilliant, bring all those skills that you're using in this world around you outside of school. Bring them into school as well. See those skills as really positive. Here You're going to have the space, the freedom to actually explore these things that really interest you and the things that you care about, and you're going to have the opportunity to connect with other individuals as well within this school.
Speaker 3:I think, talking about space again. You're all. If we're trying to bring you back to space, somebody's back. That idea of creating classrooms in which young people can constantly connect with other young people is really, really important Again, given the future that we're facing, in terms of it becoming more led by screens, ai, et cetera. The one crucial thing that we've got as human beings is that wonderful ability to work with each other creatively and develop wonderful ideas. We don't want that to be narrowed down in the classroom spaces that we're working with.
Speaker 2:So does that come back to the skill of the educator? And how do you find, do you talk in the education world about the difference between the traditional teacher and a coach? Is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's very hard for some people coming out of college. I mean, they're not often really taught in that way when they come in from college. At the moment it needs to start in training colleges that sort of facilitation. The curriculum itself at the moment needs to be reduced drastically because what it does is mean that teachers feel pressurized into direct teaching, transmission type teaching, because they need to get through a range body of knowledge in a very short period of time and they can't hang around for children to do some thinking.
Speaker 2:It comes back to time tabling, doesn't it Well?
Speaker 3:it comes back to the curriculum. So the curriculum is ludicrously too big and it doesn't allow that space for learning.
Speaker 3:I always use this sort of analogy of a fire. Now, if you put on too many logs, basically the fire goes out. You need that space, that oxygen, and it's in those spaces where the learning really takes place. But teachers find that, you know, I need to get through this, because next session we've got to get onto this and next session we've got onto this. And I think, if you probably talk to a lot of young people, they spend a lot of their days death by PowerPoint Hours and hours in front of whiteboards taking down notes and screens because of what they've got to learn, rather than a quick input and then opportunities to then share that within your community of learners about what?
Speaker 3:it means for you what you understand, what you want to find out more about, and so on, and I imagine it's slightly different for everybody, surely?
Speaker 1:Sorry, in terms of In terms of learning styles and actually probably for some people, sitting in front of a teacher and taking notes is probably the best way for them to learn, but for other people it might be watching a video or listening to a podcast. Yeah, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3:I've always been worried about. I think I mean learning styles, in some respects have been debunked.
Speaker 1:Have they? Yeah, in terms of See again, I don't have children and I think I'm out myself at school.
Speaker 3:No, and probably there's still a lot of schools that still talk about learning styles. But all the research into learning styles doesn't say you know, you're a kinesthetic learner, you're a visual learner, you know whatever they don't really. You know people are complex.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they are, you know people are complex and there's certain points where you do want to be quiet yourself. There's a certain time when you're quiet and so you just want somebody to tell you and you want to take notes. You don't want to do much thinking, you know, but that's not necessarily who you are. Long term, okay, there might be extreme cases and things like this, but generally children are more complex and generally.
Speaker 3:Also, we owe it to them to be able to teach them how to learn in a variety of different ways, yeah, to provide a whole range of different stimuli so that they can develop as more rounded individuals, because they otherwise they're limiting the choices that they're going to have in life. They're limiting their responses that they can make to things that arrive in their lives.
Speaker 2:So develop that into the spaces. They learn in your experience.
Speaker 1:That's your job, I know Well, I was just interested in Jonathan's experience.
Speaker 2:You know where he's been. What changes I mean? I don't think we've. You know we've. First time we've met today. So, I was just interested how, what changes you made in the spaces that you were in control of in those times.
Speaker 3:We became obsessed with circles. I think it's a very democratic way of organizing a classroom, particularly for this sort of whole class discussion. Yeah, it's where the teacher themselves can disappear as a facilitator. Within the circle, the children themselves can continue to facilitate the discussion. The children themselves are not just ping-ponging with the teacher. They've got 29 other young faces around them who have opinions and ideas. So, wherever possible, you know, we worked within circles. Yeah, we also wanted furniture that could be lifted and moved very, very quickly.
Speaker 2:Flexibility.
Speaker 3:And spontaneous. It's the flexibility element, yeah, and it was the the ownership of that for the children to sort of say, well, actually, if they know something's interesting happening over the other side, or the facilitator, the teacher, might go and say, well, actually, you might want to just wander over and have a look at what they're doing over there, you can pick up your chairs, your stools, your table, you can move it around, come and sit down next to them, yeah. Or you might want to have come for your areas, you might want to have quieter areas. You might want to give them facility to actually create those, generate them. Some children loved clear spaces.
Speaker 3:Just, I mean, I worked with primary school but this was still at, you know, seven, eight, nine year olds, 10 year olds, light space on carpets.
Speaker 1:I like space on carpets. Yeah, and I'm 30.
Speaker 3:There you go, so but if you do away with that, you know. But we have to recognize that some they can go down on the carpet. Then they can sit down and kind of nice little kind of star shapes where they're facing each other on the carpet and they're all talking. They've got the exercise books in front of them and they're showing that. But they're really comfortable in that particular position and there's nothing wrong with it. The only thing that's wrong with it is that the teacher feels uncomfortable until they begin to realize that actually the world isn't collapsing. Actually the children are really quite engaged down there on the carpet and things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were talking earlier about who the best educator is and how. Actually someone who's just been through that curriculum or just studied that subject is often the best person to be educating the next generation coming up. But did you cross-pollinate between year groups for that reason?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we sometimes cross-pollinated between year groups in terms of the, the orders coming down and supporting young people with their learning, but we were continually cross-pollinating within the class or, I suppose, actually within the same year group. In terms of the education, do you ever come across the educational endowment fund, the fantastic group sponsored by the government actually, that basically collects all the research into different areas of education?
Speaker 2:You sounded like a monetary fund, but what are you talking about? Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:It's a strange actually I'm so used to that title, but yeah, it's a strange time education endowment fund, but basically they carry out a huge range of sort of meta-analyses of research and they come up with a list of the things that have the most impact on children's learning. One of the top things that is around peer tuition is in terms of young people teaching other young people. Not only is it good for the young person that's being taught, but it's absolutely brilliant because, as we know, yes, you can teach it. Then you've really embedded your learning and you really fully understand it.
Speaker 3:So there was always within the school that was in that. If once you felt that you'd mastered something before you moved on, you shared that and you taught somebody else within the classroom. Yeah, so you moved out and you shared that understanding and very often then, you know, for a teacher it's absolutely brilliant because you've suddenly found so many other people who were doing your job when you thought you were the most important person who could do it yourself and actually talking to young people, they felt much more secure being taught by a peer than they did with a teacher.
Speaker 3:And this is teachers in primary schools. They love their teacher. And hopefully it's the same in secondary schools there. But you know, in primary schools they love their teacher regardless. But actually they still felt pressure when the teacher came and sat down next to them and started learning alongside them and so on. But with peers they felt very, very comfortable.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I've never seen that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and what we did is that we also did away with ability groups and things like that. Yeah, because they were going to be shown very, very clearly to I was going to ask about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just think it's wild because at school I was always in the third set for maths, which I think was the second to worst.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we weren't actually in sets for any other subject, it was just maths, I don't know why. And my GCSEs? I got A star and A.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:And then I got C and maths.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I genuinely believe it's because someone put me in that box of like you have to be there and that's your area and that's where you sit.
Speaker 3:So I don't think.
Speaker 1:I was never going to be able to do better. Yeah, and it's so interesting.
Speaker 3:Young people tend to get put in those boxes labelled at an early age five, six years of age and all the research shows that they don't leave that box for the rest of their sort of academic career. What a successful plan that is, and we do it all the time in education. Yeah, we put people in groups because it's easier again for the teacher to manage. It really is. You only have to plan for one level. Just keep it there. Keep it there. So your experiences of maths were always going to be that level.
Speaker 3:You weren't going to see any other type of maths around you because you were always in that set.
Speaker 2:The paper you took didn't allow you to get an idea. I know this is it.
Speaker 3:So you showed that you're potential in other areas. You had the same potential in maths. You just need to believe it, you need to see yourself as a mathematician, but you're being told by the system continually that actually you're not a mathematician. You create everything else. Well, paul's saying you can't. You're going to go after this group and we do that continually. And children are hyper-vigilant. At a very young age, particularly in primary schools, they look around for signals about who they are and what they're like as learners.
Speaker 3:As soon as you put them into a group that says, actually you're not particularly that good at learning, then they model that. They model that they wait for you to help them. You stick a teacher assistant by the side of them on a table. They will then sit back and think, oh OK, I need help, so I'll just wait for this adult to help me. You're actually disabling them.
Speaker 3:And there's another thing at the school we had teacher assistants never sat down with low-attaining children. In fact, the low-attaining children and the middle-attaining, they were all mixed up together with close-attaining peers. But somebody who was going to lift you up was going to introduce you to another element of learning that was beyond what you were working at, and so it was always mixed groups around the class. They also for their self-esteem. They know who are supposedly the good mathematicians. You stick a child who perhaps is struggling a bit with maths With somebody who was doing OK with maths. At that particular moment that child will lift themselves up. That child will begin to think more about their maths and begin to see themselves differently, because they know the environment in which they're working and what that tells us about themselves. You know we believe in them.
Speaker 2:We believe they can achieve. They didn't hold back the high achievers.
Speaker 3:No, because they're continuing to work on it, but they're working with somebody else. I mean, it's not, you can't do it like this. You know somebody. I'm just putting my hands out of the mirror here. So, yeah, you can't do it with somebody who's, you know, so far advanced in maths and somebody who's still down to a much lower level. You have to kind of bring it up in increments, but what you don't do is say, right, they're all at this level, so we're going to put them all together. You put the next level up together and they work together and that gap is closed constantly as a result of that, Because and a lot of it comes down to just attitudes towards themselves.
Speaker 3:The messages that you're giving them shows it allows them to untap their potential Because you've said to you, we believe in you.
Speaker 2:And bringing you back to your when you started with the circles. Yeah, I found that interesting because we had a project recently. If I can bring this back to work, is that all right? I'm actually really enjoying the educational side of this. But yeah, bringing it back to work, we had a lecture theatre we designed the other day and the constraints of the space was such that Head of Concept very creatively built the lecture theatre around all sides, with the space on the lectern in the middle of the space.
Speaker 2:And the school absolutely loved it. They thought it was ingenious because it kind of really resonated with the idea of that sort of holistic approach of not having someone at the stage on the stage, not having someone at the front. This is a case of someone imparting some knowledge and being able to people join in from all around and all contribute and it's so exciting when that happens.
Speaker 3:When you suddenly recognise that a child is looking across the circle at another child and is suddenly moved away from the teacher, you suddenly remember or you think back to how children generally in a classroom are constantly just looking at one individual when they break that habit and it's a hard habit to break you just think right, this is it, we're on the move now. I know you took it back to spaces, but one last thing about it.
Speaker 1:I spoke to.
Speaker 3:Holly about it. One thing we did away with it also was the putting up of a hand, because generally a teacher asks a question, somebody puts up a hand. Very high risk for a start For those people who are perhaps less secure in the classroom and things like that. That's a lot. It's hard enough for adults when they're in some sort of I don't know presentation and then the person says you know, anybody know what the answer is to this, and everybody looks around and I mean I do it.
Speaker 2:I certainly feel a bit of terror. You might know the answer, but there's no way your hand's going out.
Speaker 3:No, no, because it might be the wrong answer. I forget it as soon as I pass.
Speaker 1:so I'm like, oh my, blank on, but we do it to children every 30 seconds.
Speaker 3:We put them on the spot like that. So it's a very high risk situation to be in. And also, when somebody puts up their hand, you're not quite sure what they're thinking at all. It could be actually they just want to go to the loo. More often than not, when it's primary school, they want to go to the loo, or it's an avoidance strategy or something like that. I'll tell you somebody's doing something longer.
Speaker 1:Whatever it is.
Speaker 3:So what we did is we basically said right, we need a whole range. It comes from philosophy for children, which is another great initiative which is worth in terms of organizing classrooms and towards organizing groups, in terms of actually towards learning. It basically says children have a range of complex ideas in their heads. We need to be able to reflect that in the way that they actually signal it. So, instead of just putting up your hand, you could just hold up your thumb to say that you agree with something.
Speaker 3:So when somebody's talking in the classroom, you agree with that, They've given a response and you're happy with it. Or you might just put your hand sort of flat and just shake it like that, Just say you disagree, You're not quite sure. You might put your hands together and open them up to like a kind of wings you need clarification perhaps. Or you might hold up your crooked finger to make, say, I want to ask another question. Or you might put your two fists together to show you want to build on an idea. So the teacher can look around and see a whole variety of commonly agreed signals and facilitate that.
Speaker 3:And this is what you implemented, that's what we implemented, and it's like an orchestra then.
Speaker 1:Which I went to your school.
Speaker 3:Then the teacher stands back and the children themselves decided. They said, oh, I'd like to go over to Billy there because I think he wants to build on my idea. Or it's quite interesting that whatever Cetra over here wants to actually challenge what I'm saying, she's not quite you know. She's got perhaps another idea. And they suddenly recognized that this is a rich community of learning and a rich community of possible responses and ideas, rather than the teacher, is the one font of all knowledge.
Speaker 3:The one big brain, the one big brain and the teacher themselves suddenly recognises that there's a whole way of developing ideas rather than just simple question-answer. Question-answer closed questioning ways at the time.
Speaker 1:Did you have a very happy workforce.
Speaker 3:We did generally. I mean it's hard for me to say because I was ahead so I don't want to make you. I mean people seemed very. I mean we did away with performance management in the school so we moved into basically just action research, so there was no risk. Performance management generally in schools stops teachers taking risks because it's tied into their pay and everything like that. I recognise, if I recognise that teachers were good and all my teachers were good or outstanding they were, Otherwise they weren't there, we wouldn't have employed them. Why bother banging them with performance management? Don't give them the space to carry out action research in their classrooms? So all of our teachers continually carried out action research in how to develop their classrooms further in terms of. We always had focus. This could be around oracy, it could be around memory, it could be whatever, but they then came up with ideas, they looked at research and so on and then carried it out.
Speaker 2:So did you get as far as them assessing themselves and deciding that they weren't good enough, or there must have been situations where you felt like someone wasn't coming up to the mark from the point of view of being a teacher, I think when we Probably when I started as a head, but as you were in the school, teachers move on and things like that.
Speaker 3:I mean you've got to be very clear, perhaps, when things aren't working out.
Speaker 3:I'm going to sound like a really horrible person, but I just think children's lives at school are so short we can't have them having their time wasted and stuff. So it's making it clear, working with adults, professionals and saying listen, at the moment probably it's not working out or whatever, but it's more than that. Obviously I try to support them when you put things in place. But anyway, but most importantly, it was just around recruitment. Sometimes we didn't recruit unless we found. You can tell. I keep saying big blow, small statements, but there you go. I believe you can tell within about three or four minutes whether somebody's got understands teaching and learning.
Speaker 3:Or has the potential to, and a lot of it comes down with their connection with the young people in front of them, whether they're understanding what's going on as a result of what they're doing, and a lot of the time teachers fail because they basically do something and it's irrelevant really what's happening in front they're delivering and they're potentially crippled by the system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, and by the training, but again the state sector only. Yeah, by the training, as well, by the training.
Speaker 3:This is what you're supposed to do. Here's your plans Write out five pages of plans and deliver it one step at a time.
Speaker 2:So are there enough teachers?
Speaker 3:out there, are there enough. There's plenty of teachers out there, I think. At the moment Maybe we're not in core areas, perhaps in secondary schools, but they're perhaps coming into a system that, as I say, is limiting their potentials in terms of their training you know, I had one more question for you on probably more of an education personal note, but did you teach handwriting? We taught handwriting, yeah, no, it's a vital skill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a vital skill. I'm just going to say I'm going to recognize that.
Speaker 1:Oh God, yes, Great question, Ivan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, would you go now Tell me the way you've asked it? No, no.
Speaker 2:Only that I found it intriguing as to whether that skill set is going to be lost or not. I mean, I went through like a tertiary, I had a typing training Like a Pittman education thing that I did. And that set me in such good stead for speed typing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and being good on the keyboard, I see students even coming out now that are using one finger on the keyboard and I get you know, I sort of tear my hair out, thinking how have you left school only being able to type like that? And then I realize well, tablets and you know touch screens and everything.
Speaker 2:You probably don't need to type like you used to AI and everything else, but those you know we've gone from being able to do perfect handwriting to being able to do speed typing to now probably neither are so critical.
Speaker 1:Voice is the next big thing isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just yeah. How these things progress.
Speaker 3:Maybe long term, it won't happen at the moment in terms of it's a cognitive skill isn't it?
Speaker 3:It's a lovely, fine motor skill. It's at the same time there is a quintessential connection between what you're writing and the physical nature of it. You know your ideas and the physical holding of a pen and writing For young children particularly again, it's like learning to crawl. Really, it's a connection, it is. It's as fundamental as that. In some respects it's very different between pressing a button and something appearing on a screen to actually creating that with your hand.
Speaker 2:I'd be sorry to see it go.
Speaker 3:It's a good question. It is, and we did try and bring speed typing and things like that, but actually the thing that held us back in the end was time in the curriculum, and it was that leap of faith. How far can you go down that line? Because for young people it does take, and what we perhaps believed in the end was they spend so much time any way outside of school on screens, typing and things like that, they'll pick it up themselves actually, through that. Saying that, you know it is something that schools need to reflect on.
Speaker 3:At which point do you move away? They said that there are audio books sorry, not audio books kindle and things like that. We're going to take over from real books, but real books are now. It has a decline, I think, in kindle and real books are actually picking up.
Speaker 2:It's hard to predict A lot of it. On the trains, a lot of people pull out a book Vinyl.
Speaker 1:It's not very tangible about it, isn't it?
Speaker 3:And we have to recognise what is human beings we take pleasure in. Some things are just important because actually, you know, I don't know, have you got vinyl records now, Holly? Yeah, that's so very, I don't know, you haven't you're looking at me like a bad.
Speaker 1:A lot of my friends do. A lot of my friends do I don't personally, but lots of people do and it's because it's so lovely to put the record on the player and put the needle in the physical nature of it all, is it?
Speaker 3:And that's what? Again, if that's what we are sensing is important in life and we're perhaps losing, perhaps we need to always constantly reflect about those things because they bring a lot of pleasure, a lot of pleasure.
Speaker 2:And I mean we are sorry that we're not joined today by one of our plants who we did invite, alex Jiggins of the International Community School, and he sent me a few of his thoughts to include as he wasn't able to make it, but he's very much about coaching and very much about the modern forward thinking about education. I thought he would have been a good fit today, so I'm sorry he's not here, but he spoke about how learning can often happen offsite. Did you get any? Have you got any thoughts around that, Jonathan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I think, obviously going back to Marijal point, about this sort of connection with nature particularly, but yeah, the world beyond the school. It often happens beyond sight, because beyond the sight, because there's greater freedom there, there's greater range for them of stimulus etc. And learning can go off in a whole variety of different directions. You never expected it because of that freedom. When you move offsite, there is naturally less control.
Speaker 3:There is, I mean it's fine, and that's why you go offsite, because you want to introduce them to a whole range of new experiences and ideas. So yeah, quite definitely, I mean, and when you're planning spaces, planning spaces, that access to alternative things. I mean not offsite but, you know, to the outdoors, really, really important.
Speaker 2:And we have a lovely product which is a almost I'd say it's temporary. But it's not temporary, it's a substantial structure which is like a woodland classroom, you know you can open the doors back, you can roll the roof back. It's a frame which is enclosed by glass or panels and if you press the right button, you know the roof can roll back.
Speaker 2:And the whole sort of concept behind it is that it's, you know, installed in your woodland area and you can go and hold music lessons out there, or you could go and hold you know nature classes out there and then roll the doors back like byfold doors on your patio and you're out into the wellness of nature.
Speaker 3:Brilliant and that is so important, as I say, to a better disconnect. That connection is sort of biophilic classrooms or classrooms outdoors. We and not just a quick one, but one of the things we did allow the children to do when they got into Year 3, above Year 3, was design lessons that they would teach as groups to the rest of the class.
Speaker 3:Yeah so if they were doing the Mayans or something like that, we'd give them the resources and packs about religion or architecture or whatever it was, and groups would go off and look at all those different themes and then they had to create lessons 30, 40 minute lessons to teach to the rest of the children. Surprise, surprise, the vast majority of those lessons involved learning outdoors.
Speaker 3:Because, that's what they felt had the best of us. Yeah, and they worked. They did amazing things where they were learning about Mayan maths just using their bodies on the playground. I can't remember what you know different shapes that you have to make, the numbers that Mayans made but the children made them with their bodies outside on the playground and they learned about it really quickly.
Speaker 3:They set up a kind of a big triangle of hierarchy out there in terms of different levels of society and things using physically their bodies on the playground about where the kings were or whatever, and so yeah, making learning interesting and recognizing how children learn and want to learn, you know, and those are exciting times.
Speaker 2:So the challenge is to bring those spaces inside as well. I think Alec was talking about how in Singapore they built classrooms like a mountain top and other you know other ways they designed classrooms, and he spoke very much about the flexibility which we've already talked about and the need to make timetables flexible. And one interesting thing he spoke about was otherwise the only choice students make during the day is what they have for lunch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:And goes back to what you were saying at the beginning really just being told what to do and just imbibing that.
Speaker 3:Alec is doing some really lovely, interesting things at his work, it seems, and really you know, creating exciting spaces for young people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was very much about coaching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and he's a leadership coach as well, isn't he Correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:And it resonates with this conversation very much, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, alec, if you're listening, we think you're great, and maybe you'll have to come on series too when we continue this conversation, I think I mean stick with me.
Speaker 3:I mean I think also just simple things like light, noise, sound colour these are all we fat. Vital, particularly with children who are neurodiverse as well, but just generally certain temperature plaster. Yeah, all these sort of things are really, really important in terms of children's learning effectively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and some of the key things we learn as designers for education is ventilation is a key thing, which is housed back to your temperature point. Acoustics is another big one. It's a very big one. There's specific guidelines in the building bulletin which guide acoustics for classrooms. Is that right? Obviously, new classrooms come under those regulations, existing ones, it's just what you can do to make it better and you look at a room like this, which is designed for sound recording. It's got the correct acoustics, isn't it?
Speaker 3:So what are we doing? I'm not to point you, to spy on it, but what would be what are viewed as the correct acoustics for a classroom?
Speaker 2:Well, acoustics comes under a number of. I mean, I'm not an acoustician and we employ them. We employ them in our sessions. But you have reverb and you have travel of sound and there's a couple of others but how they measure it. But in a project recently we installed perforated panels. Instead of flat panels there were timber panels on the wall and they were perforated and, as we know, if sound hits a perforated surface, you can see the ceiling here is perforated. It's stopping the regular reverb rebound echo if you like.
Speaker 2:Whereas and that's just a small thing and behind the panels are like a fabric or something to absorb sound.
Speaker 3:Great great.
Speaker 2:Those are and putting the baffles in the correct places and in the ceiling. It's a percentage in a wall or a percentage on the flat surfaces in the room, and then taking account of the floor covering.
Speaker 3:And those are now regulations that you must follow, because that's quite interesting, because I've been looking at most schools. To be honest, I don't think they were historically in the 60s, 70s or whatever the ages are nowadays. And then the Victorian ones obviously were not, but it's like most of the building regulations.
Speaker 2:There has to be a kind of understanding and a tolerance of the fact that if you're working within an existing space, there's a limit to what you can do, but the regulations specifically apply when you're building a new building. There would be criteria to meet and you do your level best to get there. If you're working within an existing building and renovating or improving those spaces, what?
Speaker 3:about lights.
Speaker 2:Lights, another one.
Speaker 3:They have research shown us what the optimum level of light is in a classroom, Because I was surprised that I don't know why it happened, actually, but my classroom teachers started turning their lights off and I'd often walk into classrooms and it was just natural light rather than the LED lighting that had all been installed. It's a nice sustainable sort of replacement objective, but actually they preferred the children seemed to prefer the natural light that was coming in.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but I didn't go any further with this Feedback I've had especially when there's more neurodiverse needs amongst the children, that having control of the lighting is probably the most important thing. Having that ability to dim the lights and having a variety of light sources that you can manipulate perhaps is important to the teachers More than one specific level.
Speaker 3:We had often on, but dimmer switches would have been useful, probably for different sort of feelings. And what about? Perhaps this isn't your fit, but music also seemed to be very important to quite a lot of teachers, and quietly in the back. I mean, we're not talking about heavy rave, but just gentle music in the back room. It seemed to set the tone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I haven't seen that. I must admit that's a new one on me. Other than the sensory booths or specific areas, that need it, but to have a white noise, as I'd probably call it or a background. No, I haven't. Obviously there are systems put in in the office where they want that happening, but schools don't seem to be asking for. I haven't seen that. That's very progressive.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, again it just within the school. It seemed to happen, naturally, the vast majority of teachers eventually sort of introducing music at certain stages, at times during lessons, beginning lessons, end of lessons, whatever it was. That did seem to have a very calming effect on the children in terms of their general behaviour, but also just in terms of their attitudes towards each other. I don't know, it worked. It seemed to work really well, as did the lights, actually.
Speaker 2:We're learning something new every day.
Speaker 3:I'm not saying it's. It would be worth looking at more.
Speaker 2:Well, certainly, quite your little minute.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, we're actually coming towards the end.
Speaker 2:Fly's by, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:I know I know you can carry on forever. This happens every time. People are so worried that they're going to have enough to say. And then it gets to the end and you're like could keep going.
Speaker 3:Can I just ask Ivan about, because I think you've started looking at biofilia classrooms, haven't you?
Speaker 2:We focus on biofilia absolutely.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that's, and has that been asked for by schools, or is that? Something that you're developing, or more schools are now saying listen, we do need to get more nature, etc.
Speaker 2:I mean I think we recognise it right across the board that not just in schools, in any environment that we design now that nature makes a difference, and on a recent project it was very much about punching the biggest windows we could in the side of the building to allow them to see the beautiful trees and south downs from that vista in the classroom. And it's very much around colour in schools as well. One of our designers did a whole piece on how colour impacts learning and the use of yellow being creative and red being anger and the greens and the blues, the calming colours, that kind of help.
Speaker 2:So no wellness and wellbeing and biofilia. Our designers will always try and incorporate some form of natural planting if they can, and sustainability in terms of the materials that you're using and things.
Speaker 3:So again, just to add that very much to the forefront of the way that you're done. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:In the office environment. We did one project for the London Waste and Recycling Board. And they were very much about. Every single product that went into the space had to have a label on it. People needed to be able to read about the sustainability circle for that particular product.
Speaker 3:Imagine that in schools, if you're a child seeing a desk and you can see how that's been constructed, absolutely, I mean some of it comes with a price ticket.
Speaker 2:And some of it is very easy to do. So. Our designers spend a lot of time on CPD, which is their continuous professional development and understanding the back story behind different manufacturers and how they produce their products, and how some particular carpet is made from car tyres or how some particular worktop is made from yoghurt pots that's all melted down. I mean, in this project we smashed the glass in the existing space because we were doing the demolition before we started the strip out of the existing space, broke the glass down, sent it off to a specialist workshop where they broke it right down, mixed it with resin and brought it back as a worktop.
Speaker 3:Brilliant, so it was a lovely story to be able to say that you know this glass was in the space.
Speaker 2:It's been reused in a different purpose and it was great Circular.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, we have a whole episode on circular economy. Ok, so have a listen.
Speaker 2:That comes into all of our projects, and often it's a choice the client has to make as to how far they want to take it. But it's becoming more and more significant and definitely I'm not exactly having a pump for our designers, but they have the credentials to be able to make those product specifications and let you know the impacts and where those products have come from.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, I mean back on that project. There was floorboards coming out of the Royal College of Surgeons, I think it was. There was light fittings coming out of Liverpool Street Station renovation. There was various places we'd got particular products and all the furniture had been given a fresh lease of life and put back in the market. So it was quality product that had been through a process of replacement of parts that were damaged and the new warranty put back on the product and it came out at a significantly lower price than the original ticket but it had a warranty on it and they were renovated and so great, back in the marketplace with those products.
Speaker 3:So no, it's very important and very topical, and it's just such an important message to give to young people. I mean, they want to see the world in which they live, representing the world that we want them to create, and more and more, especially the more significant projects to a school.
Speaker 2:We've been involved in actually drawing the children into the design discussion.
Speaker 1:And that's been great fun, Because yeah, you get.
Speaker 2:I mean, normally they choose the student leaders or the council or whatever it is, but they come in and they've got opinions and it's great because the designers interact with them and there's this sort of dialogue going on and you hear what's important to them and they've got what they want.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that again comes down to that point of ownership and sense of belonging in a school and if it's, you've had a voice in accurate it's created and what it looks like and how it's used. Different culture you create. Yeah, it's important.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, this has been very insightful. I've enjoyed. I've learned so much. I feel like I've just talked about me at school loads there you go. Thank you both so much for joining me today. You can connect with both Jonathan and Ivan on LinkedIn. Their LinkedIn profiles will be in the show notes and also the link, obviously, to AW Spaces. You can have a chat with one of our education specialists if you've got a project coming up. So thank you both.
Speaker 3:Thank you, holly, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 1:This podcast is sponsored by Projects, the home for better business. With two beautiful buildings open in the heart of Brighton, one in the lanes and one moments from the beach, plus many more set open across the UK, projects is proud to house a community of collaborative businesses. They change and operate inspiring spaces that make everyone feel included. Projects combines co-working areas, dedicated desks and fully serviced offices with meeting and event spaces, cafes, bars and a gym and this podcast suite. Find out more, book a tour and arrange a free trial via their website, wwwprojectsclubcouk. Plus, you can let them know that you've heard about them via the spaces that shape us to receive 25% off your first podcast suite booking.
