Transforming Learning Spaces and the Impact on Pedagogical Approaches: A Beginning Teacher's Journey

Abstract

Beginning teachers have a range of concerns when they commence their first appointment. Foremost amongst these is classroom management. While beginning teachers aim to meet new curriculum challenges and develop their personal pedagogical approaches, these concerns are often made subordinate to their strong desire to maintain control at a classroom management level. As a result, educational spaces often operate as zones of containment rather than spaces of learning. Using an auto-ethnographic approach that seeks to use personal experience as a means of illustrating broader cultural experiences (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2010), this paper will outline one beginning teacher’s journey from adaptations to a space of containment, to an understanding that pedagogical transformation also requires a transformation of spaces – both in their uses and their design. This paper includes photographs and spatial drawings of a science laboratory built during the Building the Education Revolution era, to outline the evolution (Loughlin, 2013) of both the science laboratory space and the beginning teacher’s understanding of the dialogic nature of space and pedagogy. According to Blackmore, Bateman, Loughlin and O’Mara (2011), there have been few studies of educational spaces that focus on pedagogical change. This paper aims to contribute to this area as well as provide some practical suggestions for ways in which beginning teachers can be assisted in understanding the importance of space to pedagogy, and then in turn, the impact of effective pedagogy on classroom management.