Abstract:

In Europe, large investments are made in school buildings in the coming years, flexibly combining real and digital learning spaces as the sustainable educational buildings of the 21st century. School buildings with multifunctional, innovative learning environments such as learning landscapes, cluster schools and numerous mixed forms are emerging (Weyland & Watschinger 2017). However, teachers who move into a modernised school are hardly experienced how to teach in such a space: this causes major differences between the architectural idea and their everyday practice. This is why the participation of users in the development of new educational buildings is so important: it is their environment and their learning tool. The significance for participation in pedagogical architecture is noticed recently by severe financial support of EU-Erasmus+ innovation funds supporting several projects (e.g. LEA, MOBILE 2020).

Education in the Netherlands is highly decentralised, a long tradition and experience with participatory planning processes is the result. ICSadviseurs plays a central role for more than 65 years. This experience is brought into the Erasmus+ project LEA by developing a handbook for participatory planning processes as OER (2021). It will consist of a collection of applied workshops/methods from different countries, tips, tricks and examples from practice.

Since 2012 the PrismaTable method was especially efficient in the multi-levelled participation processes facilitated in more than 90 schools in the Netherlands and Germany. Participants inspired each other, exchanged knowledge and each participant contributed his own ideas. The method based on the work of Clare W. Graves (Lee et al. 2002) according to his theory of "Drives", the forces that motivate us to do or not to do something. Drives are not the same as motivation but much more complex because they interact with each other. The method is based on six different perspectives/colours on a long table, hence the name "PrismaTable" - the bundling of diversity and unity. The number of participants can vary between 15-200 people. Topics include e.g. strategic plans, development of an (educational) vision, starting points for a new building or the (re)design of a learning environment, characterized by beeing innovative and thinking-outside-the-box.

PrismaTable provides multifaceted perspectives e.g. looking at future trends, human aspects, connections, space for experimentation, entrepreneurship, organisation, administrative feasibility, culture and values. The different perspectives ensure that everyone in the school can contribute and, then again, results take into account the versatility of people. The method is used also for school development and fosters cooperation and teambuilding in all education institutions from kindergarden to universities. By taking multiplicity as a starting point, PrismaTable combines all forces in a learning organisation.

References:
[1] Lee, W.R., Cowan, C. C., Todorovic, N. (eds) (2002) Graves: Levels of Human Existence. Santa Barbara, CA: ECLET Publishing
[2] Weyland B., Watschinger, J. (eds) 2017, Lernen und Raum entwickeln, Klinkhart, Monaco.
[3] LEA (2020) www.learning-environments.eu
[4] MOBILE (2020) www.learning-space.eu
[5] OER (2021) https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/open-education/oer

Keywords:

Participation, learning environment, architecture, Netherland, Erasmus+, Handbook, ICS, LEA, Mobile.