Environment - The Display
Many teachers would agree the the classroom environment has a direct impact in the teaching, learning and general flow of the classroom. However, we as educators need to be careful of the messages and implications of our intentional set-up of the both the physical classroom environment as well the the management of the classroom environment. Are we offering students the opportunity to use the classroom as a learning space that is responsive, diverse, and that really benefits their learning?
Jewitt (2005) suggests that “the visual displays and spatial arrangements of the classroom can be understood as multimodal signs of mediating a diversity of historical and cultural scripts” (p. 318). How much input do students have? How much are they allowed to have? We need to be aware that “It is the teachers ‘interest’ that motivates his or her selection of semiotic [meaning making] resources…” (p. 312).
Educators should be looking for a system in (and outside of our classrooms) that is "activated, or re-activated by classroom pedagogy" (p. 312). One way of approaching this is harbouring the beauty of a blank space that is in turn built but students and teachers and the artefacts that are born in the classroom. Vivian Vasquez calls one example of this the 'audit trail'. By making the curriculum visible on the walls (including transcripts of conversations, drawings, covers of books studied...etc), "children got to see what was recorded as significant and worth exploring" (Comber, 2013, p. 594).
"Retracing thinking invites theorizing. As it constructed the audit trail, I began to think about using it as a tool for critical conversation with young children...By the end of the school year, the audit trail had become a joint construction between teacher and children and a means of generating and reflecting on the classroom curriculum...Each of the artifacts became a way for us to make visible the incidents that caused us to want to learn, the issues we had critical conversations about, and the action we took to resist being dominated and and to reposition ourselves within our community. They become our demonstration of and our site for constructing critical curriculum for ourselves"
(Vasquez, 2001, pp.57-58)
Being responsive to the knowledge that students are already bringing to the table (or their funds of knowledge), communal and visible learning be built. Mobilising existing cultural knowledge and perspective representations of social issues (Comber, 2013, p. 592) can lead to effective, and ethical learning spaces. “Vasquez reported that over the school year children frequently referred to objects on the wall and re-visited earlier conversations. Topics raised and explored included fairness, gender, the media, the environment and, as Vasquez puts it, a range of questions about ‘power and control’. Because the wall was visible to all, parents and guardians became involved” ( p. 594). This is what we want to happen: we want our environment in the classroom to firstly be a shared learning experience, and secondly, be a catalyst for questioning and thinking beyond the words of the written curriculum.
You might also consider what you classroom walls might look like of you offered all of the control of the display over to your students.
What if students could choose at will what they would like to include or not include in a classroom display? It might be completely different than you are imagining. It might be better. Check the toolbox for another example of how this might look in a primary class.
Environment - The Management
Ann Haas Dyson (1990) offers a perspective (and a metaphor) of classroom environment that is not only responsive to students' learning, but also may be seen as an ethical approach to literacies in the classroom. Most commonly, teachers are taught to scaffold, and to differentiate for their students. Providing multiple levels and options, and giving students the steps to reach the goal (standard or skill, rubric level....etc). She note the metaphor of weaving as an alternative. "Whereas scaffolding is a vertical metaphor, one that represents how those who are more skilful support children's progress within one activity, weaving adds a horizontal dimension. It suggests how children's progress in any one activity is supported by their experiences in varied activities...in the weaving metaphor diversity in intentions is not necessarily a problem; it can in fact be considered a resource for both teacher and child" (p. 204).
This image (right) is not a physical representation of the class, but rather an indicator of how understanding can be made by both the teacher and students. By looking beyond the outcome of singular, structured activities, teachers will be able to not only support with instructional scaffolds, but also specifically wonder, with intent, of how to use multiple products of learning to build and weave new literacies opportunities. "Broadening our vision of literacy teaching and learning in such a way may allow new insight into the complex reasons underlying children's differential progress to read and write in our schools, and it may also allow new insight into ways of helping" (Dyson, 1990, p. 205).
For educators, there are of course, skills and standards that need to be attained by students to pass further onto the next grade level. This is a reality. However, instead of working with skills in isolation (both in particular skills as well as particular subject area), Dyson may agree that considering multiple experiences, subject areas, skills and literacy opportunities can grow a teachers' understanding. Further, using students as informants of content, and mode will help to personalise for the diverse wealth of student knowledge that they are already coming to class in possession of.
The classroom is also only the start of the connections of literacies learning as“...children create comfortable learning places for more skillful literacy efforts through weaving together experiences in and out of school. Thus, a rich diversity of experiences; composing, dictating, exploring, labelling, storytelling, and playing enriches our own decision-making as well as children's literacy learning. Observing children across a range of learning spaces allows us to discover the texture of individual children's resources and to help them make connections among them” (p. 212). You might consider this as multiple 'entry points' to rich content that is supported by the classroom teacher.
Dyson's weaving metaphor puts the students first, and puts the onus on the teacher to gracefully yield the foreground of the classroom. “To put it simply, nothing comes from nothing. Moreover, the weaving metaphor makes sociocultural sense, as it encourages us as educators to work harder to understand and develop pedagogical examples of teachers building on diverse kinds of child resources, particularly the resources of children not traditionally served well by schools " (p. 212). I believe that Dyson is working from the premise that it is our responsibility to learn from students, to be respectful and responsive the the gifts and talents that they are already bringing when the walk into the classroom door. The teacher is not the giver of knowledge, rather, she more the facilitator of great (literary) experiences that will stoke the fire of loving learning and the agency to move beyond what is taught in the classroom.