The Teen Brain and its Implications for School Design

The October 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine features a great story on brain development in teenagers.   The article describes the prevailing thinking that the teen brain is still developing and hence teens exhibit erratic behavior, but goes on to discuss new thinking that teen behavior is an evolutionary response that causes teens to seek novelty.  The basic idea is that back on the savannah as children matured they needed to spread out and leave home to find new opportunities and hence pass their genes more effectively.  Those that sought novelty in their experiences did move out and were most successful in the reproductive sweepstakes, so that tendency has stayed with teenagers ever since.  The article concludes that it’s not that teenagers don’t recognize the risk in their behavior; it’s that they value the reward from their behavior more highly than the risk it entails. 

When you think about this finding relative to how we educate students it makes sense that students are bored by the mundane and stimulated by the novel.  Students need to be engaged and be encouraged to take risks with their learning.  Memorizing facts is not engaging and not terribly risky other than the risk of not remembering them correctly for the multiple choice test.  But it is risky to ask tough questions and confront your own lack of understanding.  It is risky to apply concepts to situations you have not encountered before.  And it is risky to conduct experiments or build projects that test your understanding of the way things work.

I think the environments for learning we create can facilitate measured risk taking.  We can create flexible lab-like spaces that allow experimentation.  We can create places to discuss and debate issues that require that students risk that others will disagree with them.  We can create rooms that are so agile that that they can be rearranged for each class and challenge students to try to develop the best lay out for the current task at hand.  We can create spaces that are transparent and make learning visible thus exposing students to the risk of observation as they learn.

What do you think?

Good Ideas and Unintended Consequences

I support the American Jobs Act and the $25B it allocates to school construction, but when I hear about what it’s intended to accomplish I do see a negative consequence.  This consequence is the perpetuation of obsolete schools. 

Sure, students need a safe, dry, and warm place to learn, but investing in school infrastructure should also enable schools to be better places for learning.  Research has shown that learning does improve in schools with better environments.  If a school is cold, drafty, poorly lit, has leaks in the roof and mold problems improvements simply have to be made.  When they are, students in these sorts of schools will have a marked improvement in achievement.  But what about students in schools that are already in better condition?  If the warm-safe-dry conditions are met, money is likely to go to energy improvement and deferred maintenance, items that do not have as great an impact.

If the school being renovated is arranged as an egg crate double loaded corridor, if teachers work in isolation, and the skills being taught are for the 19^th century not the 21^st, aren’t we just perpetuating obsolescence by renovating such a school?  The goal of the Jobs Act is to create jobs quickly.  These will mainly be construction and manufacturing jobs.  The rush to create them means that using the money quickly will be more important than using the money wisely. 

A better approach might be to fund innovation.  Funding school projects that are trying new things and are changing the status quo rather than perpetuating it would be a better tactic, but would not create the jobs at the rate the country needs.

Making an obsolete school last longer doesn’t mean it is less obsolete.

10 Reasons why Classsrooms are Core to Teachers in the United States

In a recent article I wrote I suggested that perhaps it was time to rethink the classroom.  I understand that for many this is a very controversial statement, and it was intended to get people talking about this subject.  I personally have nothing against classrooms as long as they do not get in the way of teaching students both the 3 Rs and the 4 Cs – Creativity, Communication, Collaboration and Critical Thinking.  Many schools and teachers are making progress in this regard especially in teaching communication, but what I see in too many schools is that the 4 Cs are still foreign concepts.  How can you teach collaboration if you yourself don’t collaborate?  How do you teach creativity if the emphasis is on the high stakes test?  How do you teach critical thinking if the teacher is the person with the answers which are dispensed to students?

 I like most people, am a product of my experiences and those have taught me that the skills embodied in the 4 Cs are becoming increasingly important.  I also see that only 70% of students are graduating from high school and in some schools only 50% and those that do graduate often aren’t prepared for work or college.  These statistics frankly frighten me and so I wonder what I can do about it as a school planner and designer.

My conclusion is that I can work to create agile environments that enable the teaching of the 4 Cs.  Many of these agile environments, like the schools in Australia that I reference in my previous blog post, are not based on the classroom.  Instead they are environments that encourage the 4 Cs.  But as I plan and design schools, I find that teachers are very resistant to considering non-classroom environments.

Most of the US teachers I have met cannot get their heads around the notion of not having a classroom.  I think there are many reasons for this and only by understanding these reasons can we hope to further the dialogue on this subject.  The reasons which follow are collected from conversations and reading I have done and begin to get at this issue.

Some Reasons why Classrooms are Core to Teachers in the United States

1.       “The Classroom is the only thing I can control”  If you think about it, a teacher is told who to teach, told what to teach, told where to teach and told when to teach.  One of the only things in their control is the physical space of their classroom.  As a reaction to this lack of freedom they cling to what they control.

2.       “Teach as you were taught”   The vast majority of teachers were taught in classrooms throughout all levels of their education and are familiar and comfortable with this container.  Leaving this comfort zone to teach in a different environment is more than a little scary to teachers.  There is no effort to instruct teachers on the use of alternative environments in colleges of education and their student teaching is typically done in a classroom.

3.       “I need a classroom to control my class”   In this one, teachers assume the confines of the classroom help them monitor and control student behavior.  Without a classroom they fear they would not be able to keep kids on task.  The classroom gives them a prescribed area of responsibility, while other more open arrangements have no boundaries to limit their responsibility.

4.       “Most students are not self motivated to learn”   Here teachers seem to be saying they can motivate students better in a confined space.  The fear seems to be that students will be distracted and hence less motivated in a non-classroom environment.

5.       “I have students from so many ethnic backgrounds and that speak so many different languages that progressive approaches can’t work”   This is usually the response to examples of non-classroom school environments in foreign countries which typically have more homogenous populations than the United States.  I am not sure why a classroom would work better in this situation.

6.       “There are state standards I have to meet”   Here, educators seem to be saying that the prescription for state standards requires a certain approach that works best in a classroom environment.

7.       “I don’t want to collaborate with another teacher, they approach things differently than me and they are sloppy”   This highlights the fear of loss of control that teachers have of a collaborative environment.

8.       “It would simply too noisy if I didn’t have a classroom where I could shut the door”  this reason draws attention to the assumption teachers make that they will be using the same teaching methods whether they are in a classroom or some other kind of environment.

9.       “I need a classroom to display student work and teaching aids”   This again is a control issue.

10.   “Planning what to do in my own classroom takes all my time, we aren’t given time to collaborate”   Here teachers are pointing out that planning time is at a premium and so there is no training or ability to collaborate to develop lesson plans in alternative school environments.

I am sure there are additional reasons why teachers tie themselves to classrooms, but these give you a flavor for some of the proximate causes.  In a future blog post I will examine how alternative environments address some of these reasons and require changes in behavior for others.

Travel Notes

This last June I traveled to Australia to speak at the CEFPI Australasia Conference.  As part of this trip, we toured Australia and also stopped in Fiji on our way back to the USA.  The conference was a terrific conference with over 500 people from all over the world attending.  My presentation was on Online Learning and the Implications for School Design, a presentation I have given several times in the last year.

For me, the highlight of the conference were the tours of schools in the Sydney area.  The new schools we visited exhibited very progressive pedagogy with a very individualized approach to learning.  Students were collaborating and communicating and presumably being creative while they thought critically about their learning.  Yes, this very much seemed to be an effort to teach 21st century skills. 

The spaces in which this learning took place was fundamentally different from the typical classroom environment that seems to be the world standard.  If anything, the spaces were most like a library in character.  One space, at Northern Beaches Christian School was in fact designed as a library but was in use as a teaching studio. 

Northern Beaches Christian School

Several classes use the space simultaneously and then move to another similar space later in the day. These were middle school aged students and the space was lively but not so loud that you needed to speak in more than a normal voice.  A key reason for this in my view was that the teachers were using the space as intended, rather than trying to force it to do something for which it was not intended - direct instruction.  Teachers were very much acting as "guides on the side" rather than lecturing to their classes.

Northern Beaches is also the home of SCIL - the Sydney Center for Innovation in Learning.  This entity is part and parcel of Northern beaches and uses the school to test new pedagogy and the physical spaces that support it.  You can learn more about them here: scil

Another interesting school I saw was the MLC School in Burwood.  This is a girls' junior and middle school designed to "transform learning."  It too was very open thus encouraging collaboration and self direction.

MLC School Burwood

This school was purpose built to support the progressive pedagogy while Northern Beaches had remodeled and adapted spaces to meet their needs.  MLC organized students into small learning communities each housed in the learning studios pictured.  There were separate activity areas but students good easily move from one to another as their learning required.  Smart boards were on mobile carts so the space could be used flexibly.  Adjacent to the learning studios glass enclosed conferences rooms allowed small groups to  retreat and collaborate while the teacher could still observe them.

Collaboration Space at MLC School

As I visited these schools I asked teachers how they liked teaching in these collaborative spaces and they were all very supportive of the concept.  The schools planning and architecture supports the way they are teaching.  They said that the freedom the layout and approach gives students actually makes them more engaged learners.

Are Australian students different than Americans in their willingness to become engaged in their learning?  Its a complicated question.  these schools are private schools, but 40% of the schools in Australia are private schools.  They use a sort of voucher system so that private schools get state funding which is supplemented by tuition.  So these students may be better off, have better parent involvement, and so may be more self directed than the typical American student.  On the other hand, they are still learning 21st Century Skills that Americans at even the best public schools are not.

For me the lesson of these schools is that this approach works well if you change the teaching paradigm to give students more control over their learning.  To support them once they have this control, a space quite different from the standard classroom is needed.

"The Bargain" and what it means for school design

In the Blog - What would happen if we let them go? posted in Education Week by the Futures of School Reform Group, Richard F. Elmore of the Harvard Graduate School of Education offers bleak observations of what he finds as he observes high school classes.  Most notably he sites "The Bargain" a phrase coined by Michael Sedlak, et al. (1986) in Selling students short: Classroom bargains and academic reform in the American high school. New York: Teachers College Press.  The Bargain is between students and teachers and says you give me order and attendance and I will give you minimal homework and passing grades.  It is a sad commentary about the disengagement of both students and teachers in too many schools. 

Many of the comments are worth reading especially the one by earthnfyre which tells about his son's achievement only occurring when he was out of school.

To me this is just more evidence that we need to work harder to engage students.  How you teach, the relationships you build and the interests of students are of course key to this engagement, but I believe that the physical environment you teach in also has a key role in supporting engagement. There is not much research on this subject and it is notoriously difficult to isolate the role of environment in engagement let alone measuring engagement itself, but a few conclusions are self evident. 

• It stands to reason that students will not be engaged if they are physically uncomfortable.  If due to poor conditions, isolation or the possibility of bullying students are reluctant to use restrooms they will avoid drinking water to avoid the restrooms.  If they don't drink water they will become dehydrated.  If they become dehydrated there learning suffers.
• It stands to reason that students that can't hear well do to a poor acoustical environment will be less engaged.
• It stands to reason that students with attention spans ranging from 5 minutes for elementary students to 10 minutes for high school students in a windowless room with no visual relief will have attention difficulties.
• It stands to reason that students working on projects in the wrong size room, and with the wrong furniture will be less engaged.

There are many more examples of how facilities influence engagement and so is it any wonder that facilities are complicit in "The Bargain?"