FLEXIBLE CLASSROOMS FOR INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

Space management is one of the variables involved in the teaching-learning process. Environments, where teachers can work, determine and define many aspects of their activities and a proper classroom design must take this factor into account.

Optimising space when there are external constraints is a well-known issue in many disciplines (operations research, computer science, management engineering and interior architecture). In education, space optimisation allows to have a Design for All perspective and promotes inclusion. Starting from the literature on this topic, we have found the interesting concept of flexible classroom, in other words classrooms with furniture that have three features: mobile, reconfigurable and informal.

Since 2015 an increasing number of US schools have reconfigured their classrooms, applying flexible classrooms. We studied the principles that underlie this use of space and we evaluated how this model influences inclusive education also in a possible introduction of this approach in the Italian school context.

In support of our arguments and considerations, we used the concept of simplexity, introduced by Alain Berthoz, physiologist of perception. Simplexity offers us a useful key to interpreting and reconfiguring educational spaces and, at the same time, to improve educational success of all learners.

This work intends to analyse space uses and configurations, where teachers and students can profitably talk and discuss. The classroom must be a place where points of view (allocentric, egocentric and eterocentric) can generate new educational solutions.

These evaluations allowed us to develop a proposal: create a classroom that is a dynamic setting, with proper furniture and spaces, allowing teachers to create inclusive contexts.