Architecting Educating
Architecting Educating re-envisions the classroom in architectural terms with 5 dimensions, combining physical movement, visual change, and spatial shifts with critical analysis. Philosophically, the overall project represents an attempt to deconstruct a dominant, dangerous and disabling identitarianism by presupposing a non-dualist, differential ontology through a a de-dichotomising of mind-body toward an immanent understanding.
Despite this, the approach maintains traditional curriculum commitments (of both the International Baccalaureate, Cambridge International and many others) to conceptual understanding and skills, as well as understanding different areas of knowledge, although treats these as perspectives, as ways of looking at provocations, rather than as universal inputs and outputs.
CONCEPT
Architecting Educating accepts the importance of conceptual understanding to learning. Concepts are powerful ideas which, although changing over time, dominate and shape the way we think about the world. We treat these as perspectives themselves, as different ways we can consider provocations, rather than as fixed Platonic Ideas. We consider the following four Cs to currently be central:
COMMUNICATION
Communication involves the process of a sender and receiver in exchanging content, through encoding, exchanging in different mediums, and decoding or interpretation. Effective communication tends to require a common language, which is to say a system of signification that creates a consensus reality. Many would argue that communication is being.
CONFLICT
Conflict is the process of real or perceived opposition between individuals or groups. It is an inevitable feature of a world in which things arise mutually, light relative to dark, day relative to night, self relative to other, good relative to bad, right relative to wrong and so on. Most thinkers distinguish between violent and non-violent conflict, seeing the latter as effective for social change, while the former as a result of a failure of communication.
CHANGE
Change is a movement, development, or transformation from one position, form, state, value, event to another. It is inherently connected in contemporary understanding to the concept of causality, namely that change is understood as a relationship between cause and effect. This itself gives rise to a notion of time, that cause must be constituted in the past, leading to an effect in the future, observed or explained by a subject in the present.
COMMUNITY
Community tends to be associated with geographically based groups of people with shared cultural practices living within defined social, political and economic structures. However, with the development of the internet, community now tends to be defined along the lines of interest groups
SKILL
Architecting Educating develops key skills, attributes of thinking people. These are all understood as gerunds to emphasise that they are something that we are doing rather than something that we become; as subjectivity itself. We treat these as perspectives themselves, as different ways we can approach provocations.
ANALYSING
Examining provocations in detail from different perspectives to draw out meaning, identifying key elements, including causes, consequences and other relationships. As well as demonstrating an understanding of the creator's choices and purpose, and the impact it has on its audience.
INVESTIGATING
Questioning provocations and issues surrounding them in meaningful ways, conducting appropriate research where necessary to further explore and develop ideas.
COLLABORATING
Engaging carefully with the perspectives of others and working with them in effective ways to develop understanding and actions.
RISK TAKING
Showing a willingness to approach provocations with openness and a determination to challenge existing approaches to such ideas.
AREA OF KNOWLEDGE
This is open to change based on particular curriculum requirements in terms of different areas of knowledge (i.e. mathematics, sciences, humanities, arts) and teachers should always work to draw on students themselves in constructing their own archictectural arrangements rather than imposing it on them. From my experience, this is particularly true with regards to the dynamics of the y axis, where it is essential to start with the students own innate awareness of how their physical body position transforms their thoughts.
INTEGRATED HUMANITIES
My integrated humanities curriculum is based on years of practical experience delivering the humanities and social sciences in middle and high school. It aligns perfectly with MYP Individuals and Societies and Cambridge Global Perspectives. It embeds philosophical, political and sociological perspectives in the architecture itself, giving space for the remaining disciplines of history, psychology, geography and economics, to be approached appropriately as domains inevitably distorted by political and social positions.
Each dimension is introduced gradually until students habitualise their understanding, over time this ultimately becomes a fluid, flowing, dynamic and highly engaging analytical process that transforms learning.
1ST DIMENSION = LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
The y axis is used to explore levels of analysis: personal, local, national, global. Students physically change their height in their physical space from lying, sitting, kneeling to standing when analysing issues from these different levels.
LYING = PERSONAL
Looks at issues from the perspective of the individual, the feelings, choices, perceptions, and personalities of those who comprise a society.
SITTING = LOCAL
Looks at issues from the perspective of the local community, which is defined by those who live there and their practices, and so can represent a geographic splace as small as a street or as large as a city.
KNEELING = NATIONAL
Looks at issues from the perspective of the nation state where events and trends have an impact within the geographical boundaries of a particular country or between countries.
STANDING = GLOBAL
Looks at issues from the global level in which events and trends have far-reaching and long-term impacts across the world, cutting across social identities and interests.
2ND DIMENSION = POLITICAL SPECTRUM
The x axis is used to explore the political spectrum, with students physically changing their horizontal position in the classroom to explore the range of radical left, the conservative centre, to the reactionary right perspectives.
LEFT = RADICAL
Looks at issues from the perspective of those who believe in the need for radical social , political and economic change.
CENTRE = CONSERVATIVE
Looks at issues from the perspective of those who believe in the general defence of the status quo in terms of balancing equality and hierarchy.
RIGHT = REACTIONARY
Looks at issues from the perspective of those who strongly oppose social change and tend toward the return to some previous socio-political arrangement that is perceived to have been better than the current one.
3RD DIMENSION = DEGREE OF AUTHORITY
The z axis is used to explore the degree of authority, with students relative position to the front of the physical space (i.e. the teacher or their phone or computer) indicating the range from authoritarian to libertarian.
FRONT = AUTHORITARIAN
Looks at issues from the perspective of those who believe in the need for social, political and/or economic control.
BACK = LIBERTARIAN
Looks at issues from the perspective of those who believe in the maximisation of personal freedom.
4TH DIMENSION = SOCIAL CATEGORY
The 4th dimension explores how different issues look through the lenses of different social/sociological categories: age, gender, ethnicity, class. These are represented with the use of literally different pairs of glasses: a pair of +2.0 reading glasses for age; a pair of heart glasses for gender; a pair of aviators for ethnicity; and a pair of sports glasses for class. Students are encouraged to buy this set of glasses for use in class (from a dollar store), alternatively we use filters/effects in Instagram to represent each.
READING GLASSES = AGE
Looks at issues from the perspective of different age groups, considering particularly the elderly, the middle aged and youth positions.
HEART GLASSES = GENDER
Looks at issues from the perspective of gender, considering feminine, masculine, and LGBT+ positions.
AVIATOR GLASSES = ETHNICITY
Looks at issues from the perspective of ethnicity, considering the positions of different ethnic groups, such as black, white, asian etc.
SPORTS GLASSES = CLASS
Looks at issues from the perspective of different classes, considering the positions of the rich, the middle classes and the poor.
5TH DIMENSION = ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE
The 5th dimension refers to the disciplinary perspective. Academic disciplines are relatively new human inventions, emerging in the 19th century when universities began to develop specialised departments. They are defined by their scope and purpose of inquiry, the methods and tools they use to produce knowledge, as well as the language and concepts they use to communicate that knowledge, forming a unique view of reality.
In the case of integrated humanities, four discplines are chosen: history, psychology, geography and economics. Politics, sociology and philosophy are themselves already embedded in the architectural structure itself and so do not need to be covered independently. Each of these disciplines is approached within a different physical space. In our Instagram classes this requires students to physically move around and have access to appropriately similar spaces (e.g. a desk, living room, garden, street).
CLASSROOM/OFFICE = HISTORY
Looks at issues from the perspective of history, considering past events, trends and developments as the result of social forces and individual decisions.
CHILL ROOM/LIVING ROOM = PSYCHOLOGY
Looks at issues from the perspective of psychology, focusing on the internal and external factors that affect human behaviour.
FIELD/GARDEN = GEOGRAPHY
Looks at issues from the perspective of geography, considering the interaction between individuals, groups and their environment over time.
RUNNING TRACK/STREET = ECONOMICS
Looks at issues from the perspective of economics, considering the world in terms of the operation of market forces.