Best Practice

Taking a risk with... your classroom

Pedagogy
Continuing her series on risk-taking in your teaching, Nadine Pittam considers how we can push the boundaries with the structure and set up in your classroom

The learning environment influences both the educators and the learners. This is the truth, and it is irrefutable.

Our role as teachers is to ensure that this influence is productive. Sandra Horne Martin in Children and their Environments: Learning, Using and Designing Spaces (2005) writes: “Physical and spatial aspects of a learning environment communicate a symbolic message about what is excepted to happen in a particular place.

“The atmosphere is readily apparent when one enters the classroom and is reflected by subtle cues in the physical arrangement as well as by the style of teaching. The arrangement of classroom space can communicate expectations for behaviour that are reinforced by institutional policies.”

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