Converting the Schoolyard Into a Learning Space: A Strategy for Public Education

Abstract

Technology and globalization have shaped the generation of students in the 21st century. However, actions to configure school space remain stuck in 20th century standards. This article describes a study that contributes with strategies of innovative pedagogies by exploring the use of available spaces in Brazilian public schools. The study involved teaching and learning school curricular subjects in the schoolyard through physical interventions that were designed using playground equipment. Despite the absence of spatial boundaries, usually made by walls in seminar rooms, the interventions polarized the distribution of students in the courtyard with no loss of pedagogical control. An implicit hierarchy was established in the relationship between teacher and students, since the teacher’s position did not differ spatially from the student’s position, offering freedom for interaction.

Keywords

creative teaching learning spaces innovative pedagogies school architecture public schools

Introduction

Technology and globalization are factors that have shaped the generation of students in the 21st century, making them more socially integrated and, according to Rosenfeld and Loertscher (2007), stimulating them to make decisions collaboratively. Surveys related to the generation of the future (Innovative Learning Designs, 2011; JISC, 2006; Thornburg, 2004) usually highlight issues about educational and material changes to be carried out to support the generation of “too much information” (Fisher, 2005; Oblinger, 2006). For Boys (2011),

what is odd in learning spaces debates is that whilst contemporary ideas about teaching and learning have been profoundly influenced by wide shifts in cultural theory, attitudes to how space works have remained resolutely stuck in a common-sense, modernist and functional mode. (p. 31)

Such functional and modern mode design approach remains concerned about developing a rational and constructive aesthetics, rather than developing a link between the contemporary debate on pedagogical and social aims and learning space organization. This approach turned out to reproduce spatial arrays that refer to the beginning of industrialization, with garments of current architecture (Boys, 2011).

Analysis of current education shows that teaching and learning in schools today is still based on traditional models with disciplines divided in the curriculum grid (Jones, Jo, & Martin, 2007), which is a characteristic of the industrialization period, when classroom occupation was aimed to transmit knowledge through a vertical relationship between teacher and student. Thus, spatial relations were established through consecutive rows of desks in the traditional classroom setting, allowed student control and the reproduction of a hierarchical model of education, which has the teacher as the central figure (Vieira, 2000). This traditional mode of education, which has been developed during the 19th century and still remains in school organizations, is based on expository methodologies and memorization (Oliveira, 2006).

In the classroom, relations are established through visible pedagogies, which can be defined as knowledge transmission regulated by an explicit hierarchy, explicit sequencing rules, strong pacing, and explicit criteria (Bernstein, 2003). On the other hand, the goal of new teaching strategies is to achieve an active learning experience, leading to knowledge construction. Therefore, schools need to be designed to develop skills from more exploratory and social settings than they were in the early 20th century. New learning spaces should not only incorporate technologies but also enhance new patterns of social and intellectual interaction, from new forms of research, experimentation, collaboration, and multidisciplinary activities (National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, 2004).

In this regard, this article discusses teaching and learning strategies to boost innovative pedagogies addressing the 21st-century students. Hence, we explored low-cost strategies through the design of physical interventions using the existing playground equipment to develop innovative teaching practices using available spaces in Brazilian public schools.

The incorporation of pedagogies that are centralized on cognitive development has led the school environment to become an interactive learning device (National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, 2004). This approach is based on knowledge construction (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978) through environment and social interaction. Such approach is also emphasized in Brazilian pedagogical discourse. According to the Brazilian Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação, 2005), social interaction is the basic point in children development. According to the Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação, 1998), under the name of constructivism, both ideas that regard the action of the subject are gathered: the role of social interaction in child’s learning and the development process.

In Brazil, schoolyards and their equipment are underutilized, and are “[. . .] intended exclusively for the ‘discharge of energy’” (Azevedo, Rheingantz, & Tângari, 2011) or for sports practice. This may have contributed to the neglect of such areas in the educational planning. In the institutional discourse (Ministério da Educação, 2005), the idea of the contemporary Brazilian school that has spaces to encourage interdisciplinary and multidimensional knowledge, constituting places that encourage cooperative, supportive, critical, and creative work, is present. According to the Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação, 1998, p. 95), school physical space needs to consider the interaction of children through flexible spaces that enable innovations to be created both by children and educators. Despite Ministério da Educação’s recommendations, there are no clear indications in the Brazilian institutional system that recreational areas could be used as effective learning areas, neither are there any programs for supporting the implementation of innovative teaching practices.

Bernstein (2003) cited a report called “Children and Their Primary Schools” (Plowden, 1967 in Bernstein, 2003) to give an example of invisible pedagogies. According to the author,

in this book there were thirty-six pictures. If you look at those thirty-six photographs, there are children playing creatively by themselves: individual, productive play. There are pictures of children playing in groups, there are children in the school corridors and in the garden surrounding the school, but it is difficult to find a teacher. This is the context created by an implicit hierarchy. The more implicit the hierarchy, the more difficult it is to distinguish the transmitter. (p. 67)

Based on the example comes the idea that the courtyard area in the school resembles the context described by Bernstein and, thus, it could be used to implement teaching methods of invisible pedagogies. The courtyard, as an existing space in Brazilian schools, would not involve large sized works in schools already built. To evaluate the use of the schoolyard as a learning space, we analyzed the results of a case study that consisted of an experiment with 13- and 14-year-old students. The experiment involved the use of objects made from existing playground equipment. These physical interventions were linked to the transmission of curriculum subjects.

The Space of Discipline

In the 19th century, classroom layouts were always rigid: The teacher’s desk was placed on a high platform from where he or she could observe all the students. The furniture used in schools during the 19th century, which was still being used in the early 20th century, consisted of chairs and desks in solid wood, with cast iron feet, which were nailed to the floor to remain where they were placed, limiting children’s movement.

This period characterized the first phase of industrialization, in which “education of working classes was an attempt to bring order and rationality, regulation and uniformity [. . .]” (Frago & Escolano, 1998, p. 27). According to Vieira (2000, p. 2), “until the twentieth century, the organization of the school environment was similar to prisons and cloisters, discipline was strict and controlled by surveillance and obedience.”

Surveillance, control, and discipline were also used in large corporations in the early 20th century. Taylorism (the management theory of the workflow) and Fordism (a modern economic and social system based on an industrialized and standardized form of mass production) established the practice to enhance the production of efficient labour. The assembly line created by Henry Ford for mass production of a single car model, the Ford Model T, is an emblematic example of this phase.

According to Taylor and Vlastos (1975), some historians of education suggest there is more than a causal relationship between the rise of industrialization in the 19th century, with its mass production techniques, and the educational system that developed in the same era. The final result is a standardized product, either a car or a person, which is formed in accordance with the strict requirements of a systematic production method such as the assembly line. Therefore, architects designed schools based not on information or empirical studies about child cognitive development (this was not part of pedagogical speech in the 19th century), but on what society had decided that education should be (Taylor & Vlastos, 1975).

According to Nair and Fielding (2005, p. 17), classroom [of the industrial age] is the most visible symbol of an educational philosophy that starts from the assumption that a predetermined number of students will learn all the same, with the same person in the same way at the same place for many hours each day.” According to Lima (1989), “education was required by industrial society, but forming an independent individual was not required” (p. 56).

According to Foucault (2008, p. 138), “while modern discipline was aimed to produce docile bodies, the post-modern control aims to produce flexible bodies.” This is an important difference between modern industrial society and the contemporary entrepreneurial society. For Foucault (2008), disciplinary modern society was concerned with producing individuals capable of adapting themselves to the routine of factory work. In today’s society, “the knowledge of experience, judgment, coordination capacity, self-organization and communication are factors that companies understand as their human capital” (da Cruz & Saraiva, 2012, p. 8).

An example that illustrates the transition observed in the last decades in terms of industrial modes of production is Volvo’s model of production, as opposed to Ford’s. In “Ford’s model,” social organization on the factory floor was led around a nonassociative mechanical atmosphere, incorporated in the assembly line. In “Volvo’s model,” human labor groups replaced the mechanical model of the assembly line. In this standard, employees can act in cooperation, discuss, and decide among themselves how to organize work (Gyllenhammar, 1977).

The floor plan of Volvo’s factory in Kalmar, Sweden, was entirely designed to focus on group work: Employees remained visually and socially connected. Therefore, many people showed an interest in learning new activities with each other (Gyllenhammar, 1977) unlike the workers of Ford’s industrial production.

As in the Ford’s production line, in the disciplinary society, communication in the classroom was not permitted. The rigid layout of desks purposely avoided interaction among students. Both the assembly line and the curriculum grid are rigid structures that shaped the paradigms of industrial disciplinary society. Post-Fordism work patterns have changed the centralized work structure directing production to teamwork, based on decentralized structures to promote autonomy, cooperation, and proactivity. The new pedagogical proposals have also undergone this change.

The 21st-Century Learning Spaces

An emblematic example of physical changes in the school environment derived from pedagogical changes is Vittra School in Sweden. Vittra School was designed with an open and integrated spatial configuration with flexible spaces. Through its spaces, the school shows changes in teaching and learning paradigms, which characterize the 21st-century features.

Digital technologies have taken an important role in learning in Vittra’s example. Multiple workstations to read, relax, learn, and even watch movies are supported by sets of special furniture that allow students to work side by side with their laptops. Teachers orient students, who are networked without physical barriers or time delimiting their permanence in spaces.

The pedagogical model of Vittra School, adapted to technological mobility, sets a mismatch model between content and physical space, whereas the virtual environment and the content are in alignment with distance education models. The rigid boundaries defined by space and time in school attendance, which have shaped the act of teaching and learning, were dissolved within the time–space relation (Saraiva, 2006). While in the seminar room, bodies are exposed to a disciplinary surveillance, in virtual learning environments, visibility falls on what the subject produces (Saraiva, 2006). Vittra School, with its decentralized spatial configuration, intends to stimulate each student’s production, which demands self-regulation. This type of school can be compared to companies like Google® (World Summit on the Information Society, 2013), Facebook®, and Apple®, among other technology and digital media companies.

Vittra Telefonplan School project came from the school pattern of teaching and learning, established in 1993. Sweden (Vittra School’s host country) has an entire industrial culture based on cooperation, where working in groups is part of the local culture, as in the example of Volvo’s production (Gyllenhammar, 1977). Stephanie Hamilton, a specialist in innovation management and a leading educator at Apple Learning, argues that the use of technology involves not only digital integration but the task of transforming learning (Innovative Learning Designs, 2011). For Hamilton, leadership is achieved by learning and not by technology. Such ideas of learning have combined with the metaphors used by David Thornburg in his article titled “Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century.” Both ideas and concepts were adopted to model learning environments at Vittra Telefonplan School.

The theory argued by Thornburg (2004) addresses a new educational system, which is based on three metaphors that define spaces for each learning concept:

“Campfires”: This metaphor designates meeting places around a storyteller. We see the image of a teacher who shares his or her knowledge with students.

“Watering hole”: metaphor for a source (watering hole) where everyone goes at some point to take information (water); that is the place to exchange knowledge and share information.

“Cave”: metaphor that relates to the space of a cave where we get in touch with ourselves; that is the individual space to reflect and to study (Thornburg, 2004).

Besides these three spaces, two other possible spaces include:

4. “Mountaintop”: Here, a student can celebrate success but also reflect on the width and depth of the world of being and learning.

5. “Sandpit”: where a student can experiment the ideas of materiality, form, and motion in a hands-on way (e.g., as in a maker space).

At Vittra School, they apply the aforementioned pedagogical models in spaces designed to support each teaching methodology. Thus, the teacher accomplishes knowledge transmission in the campfire setting. In the watering hole, the space promotes social interaction and knowledge construction by students. In the cave, the space provides individual and connected learning. Thornburg’s educational system suggests open and integrated spaces to enhance communication and interaction, although there are also some enclosed spaces to provide lectures and studies. The system assumes a division of school space for different educational activities. Divisions at Vittra Telefonplan’s internal space are not permanent, nor rigid, featuring the movement of students and teachers in space. The internal spaces of Vittra School’s environment are connected. Besides, furniture and other equipment were designed to encourage physical and social interaction.

Although the school setting is characterized by an open plan, with fluid and integrated spaces, there are spaces that can be temporarily closed. There are spaces, for example, that arise from the wide space like big toys, like a house that can be used externally as a blackboard and internally as an area of research, which allows it to be closed. The spaces and the furniture were strategically designed to ensure freedom for students to use and manipulate the environment where they learn, and to stimulate the development of cognitive and noncognitive skills such as the following: interaction, creativity, and self-confidence. Sofas, benches, and tables can be used according to children’s imagination. Space limit barriers are not imposed; rather, large continuous areas for children to occupy were designed.

Integrated into architecture, digital technology has encouraged the setting of fluid spaces. These spaces encourage multidisciplinary activities and collaboration among students in educational institutions, just as it has influenced the configuration of workspaces in large companies of the 21st century, whose offices are spatially organized similarly to Vittra School’s offices.

Hellerup School in Denmark, as well as Vittra, has no conventional classrooms. Recognized for being innovative, Hellerup is not a typical school. The progressive retrofit of traditional schools seems to indicate a tendency to use circulation spaces, courts and playgrounds, digital technologies, and furniture all adapted to create opportunities for collaboration in school activities.

Spaces That Promote Interaction

European countries have invested in redesigning traditional schools spaces as a strategy for the implementation of innovative pedagogies. Erika Mann School in Berlin has completed a renovation in a 19th-century school building. In the renovation, wide corridors and escape routes were transformed into additional learning and living spaces as part of an educational reform. Seating and cloakroom elements of diverse and nonflammable materials immerse each floor in a different atmosphere and simultaneously create space for differentiated learning in small groups. The transformation of Erika Mann Elementary School has become an example of social integration through participation, and shows that even on a small scale, architectural interventions can act as a social catalyst for the neighborhood. The school renovation project furnishes circulation, recreational spaces, and classrooms to promote new interaction experiences among children and interaction among children and objects, through furniture and interventions on the walls and floors of the building.

Erika Mann Primary School’s building, designed by Ludwig Hoffman in 1915, was extended for all-day operation and to suit contemporary educational concepts of a rhythmic learning atmosphere. Beyond a collaborative process, children should be able to form and shape their daily environment—not only suggestively in the form of ideas but as actual co-designers of their world. The project develops the narrative of a “silver dragon world” developed with the pupils in the first phase. Corridors are filled with sitting areas for class purposes. Five modules (day bed, cave, stand, landing, and table with foldable bench) give children the opportunity to test their bodies, learn and play without being forced to sit according to the norm. In two new leisure rooms, foldable chairs and soft materials provide space and shelter for introverted occupation. The mirror gallery serves as an additional exhibition space and at the same time, makes the children’s handicraft an architectural highlight.

Such kinds of space that promote interaction and can be explored by children—like Vittra School, Hellerup, and Erika Mann’s spaces—are idle most of the time in Brazilian schools. Precisely in Brazil, innovative pedagogical discourse did not find architectural spaces to implement their practices. Brazilian legislation has already recognized in the base of its guidelines the idea that the intellectual growth of a child is a partial function of his or her opportunity and of the environmental circumstances. But, Brazil still lacks similar experiences, despite having recognized ideas such as Montessori’s that concrete experiences—prepared with materials in specially designed environments—can provide conditions to qualify learning, from simple to more complex tasks (Taylor & Vlastos, 1975).

The Use of the Schoolyard as a Learning Space

In this study, we analyzed the results of a pedagogical experiment that involved the construction of physical interventions using the playground equipment, associated with elementary school curriculum subjects. The subjects chosen had been previously taught to students in the classroom. The experiment was carried out in a public school courtyard in a small city in the South of Brazil called Horizontina, and it was authorized by the Department of Education and Culture of the City.

The experiment was carried out with a group of 35 students of the last grade of elementary school, aged 13 to 14 years, with the supervision of the Department of Education and Culture of Horizontina. The school subjects chosen included maths and sciences and were easily associated with the design of the objects used in the interventions.

The location of the interventions was represented in areas marked on the ground plan (Figure 1). In Zone 1, in the place where there are swings, the first intervention was built involving the use of a swing (Figure 1, right image). In Zone 2, there is equipment that consists of a spatial structure, where the second intervention was built (Figure 1, left image).

Figure 1.

Areas of intervention in the schoolyard.

The intervention called “the pendulum” (Zone 1) was designed from curriculum contents of Maths and Natural Sciences of the ninth grade of elementary school, described in public school documents provided by the Department of Education and Culture of the city of Horizontina. The related contents are the following:

The pendulum movement: oscillation period

Trigonometry: angles

A swing in the school playground was used to show the pendulum movement, associated with angles to describe the movement amplitude. To facilitate the description of the angular amplitude, a protractor was mimicked as a background of the swing. In the metal structure of the swing set, plywood boards were fixed to allow the design of the protractor.

The plywood boards were painted with dark green ink, where the protractor was outlined, from 0 to 180 degrees with white chalk. The 90-degree angle on the protractor was tangential to the swing seat in its balance point. The protractor described the course of the seat with a radius equal to the length of the swing chain. Degrees were marked on the outlined arc (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

The “pendulum” intervention.

In the second intervention, the content covered in the experiment refers to the knowledge of simple machines operating principles and integrates the ninth grade of elementary school, described in the public school documents provided by the Department of Education and Culture of the City of Horizontina. The experiment called the “Archimedes screw” (Figure 3) illustrates the principles of operational mechanisms of material transportation through the inclined plane. It aims to extend student’s perception of strategies of material transportation from a lower to a higher level. Through a hose wrapped spirally around a PVC pipe, we created the conditions to carry water from a basin at rest, located at the ground level (at the bottom end of the tube) to the upper end of the tube. The intervention took, as support, a metallic spatial structure used for motion exercises.

Figure 3.

The “Archimedes screw” intervention.

The components of this intervention include a PVC pipe of 100 mm diameter, another PVC pipe of 50 mm and a colorless hose, and a metal wheel of a broken toy and a tree branch (Figure 4). We considered the manipulation of the created object to clarify the perception of its operating principles.

Figure 4.

Intervention components.

The screw was positioned at 1.10 m high from the ground level. The larger diameter tube formed the screw body, around which the hose was fixed in a spiral shape. The smallest pipe was connected to tree branch, allowing the fitting and adjustment of the inclination of the larger tube. The wheel was attached to the upper end of the PVC pipe, allowing the bolt handling. A bowl with water was placed on the grass; the lower end of the larger tube was immersed inside the bowl, allowing the water to be captured through the screw drive. To facilitate the visualization of the water path within the colourless hose, green aniline was added to the water.

Experiment and Data Collection

To provide reference about the placement of students and teachers in the courtyard during the experiment, small wooden stakes were placed in the grass every meter from the objects to mark the distance of the students from the interventions. The position is represented in the data analysis phase of this research.

In the first experiment, the approaches to the pendulum movement and trigonometry were related, so that students could understand them. The exercise involved the participation of two children: one sitting on the swing and another writing down the initial angle at the beginning of the pendulum motion. From a group of 35 children located around the experiment, 2 of them were invited to participate: one child sat on the swing, while the other caused a back angle of 30° from the rest position relative to 90° in the center of the protractor. From the mark of 30°, the child sitting on the swing seat was released, swinging back. The trajectory of movement corresponds to the angular amplitude of the oscillation of a cycle. Two students around the intervention recorded the time of an oscillation cycle using their digital watches. Children realized that departing from the knowledge of the oscillation cycle they could tell the period of time.

After the pendulum experiment, students were invited to go toward the other intervention. Students moved in groups. When the second experiment started, students were distributed in the access ramp, next to the structure where the intervention was built. Some students were placed on the sides of the intervention and in another equipment close to the intervention area.

Once all students were placed around the intervention, a student was invited to move the metal wheel at the top of the PVC pipe in the same direction. The student turned the wheel with constant speed and they could begin to see the water flow inside the hose. As the student rotated the wheel, the students perceived the phenomenon, which consisted of transporting water through the helical movement of the spiral, or screw, through the slope.

Data Analysis

The distribution of students during the experiment is represented on the floor plan of the schoolyard through diagrams. Around each intervention, rings were marked representing the distances of the students from the area of each object (Figures 5 and 6).

Figure 5.

Distribution of students in the schoolyard during the “pendulum” experiment.

Figure 6.

Distribution of students in the schoolyard during the “Archimedes screw” experiment.

Teachers who attended the experiment were represented in the diagram in a light blue color, the students were represented in black and the students that participated actively in the interventions were represented in red. The area around the first intervention is outlined in Figure 5, comprising a circle of 2 meters in diameter, which is related to the angular amplitude of the swing oscillation. Around this area, which we called the “point of interest,” the radial occupation of students was represented on the plan with distances defined by different colors. The radial parts, which were represented in gray, constitute the areas of occlusion points, where students could not view or participate in the experiment.

Looking at the diagram (Figure 5), it is possible to see students distributed in a radius up to 5 m from the area of the equipment used in the experiment, being located as follows:

Ring 1 = 5 students

Ring 2 = 11 students

Ring 3 = 7 students

Ring 4 = 6 students

Outside of the field of view = 4 students

In the second experiment, the outlined area of intervention in Figure 6 comprises a circumference of 3 meters in diameter. This circle (representing the area of intervention in the diagram) covers the area around the structure where the intervention was built. The area of the structure corresponds to an area enclosed by 2 meters length 2 meters width.

Figure 6 shows the student’s position during the second experiment. In the diagram, we have:

Area of intervention = 3 students

Ring 1 = 16 students

Ring 2 = 15 students

Ring 3 = no students

Ring 4 = no students

In order to analyze the collected data, we used the following attributes to compare the schoolyard occupation during the experiment and the occupation inside the classroom:

Distribution and grouping of students in the schoolyard during the experiment

Distance of the students from each intervention (areas of interest)

Participation (active, passive, induced, and spontaneous) in the experiment

Established relationships between teachers and students

Classification and structuring (Bernstein’s pedagogical model) in relation to space

For this analysis, we used the measurements specified by the Foundation for the Development of Education, from São Paulo State, Brazil, for a standard classroom for the same number of students as in the experiment. As such, Figure 7 refers to the graphic representation of a standard classroom (seminar room) and Figure 8 shows a graphic comparison of students’ distribution in the experiment and students’ distribution in the traditional classroom. The data analysis is shown in Table 1.

Figure 7.

Students distribution in standard classroom for 35 students Foundation for the Development of Education (2011).

Figure 8.

Students distribution in the two interventions and in the classroom.

Table 1.

Data Analyses.

Attributes	Intervention 1	Classroom	Intervention 2
Classification (C) and framing (F)	(−C−F)	(+C+F)	(−C−F)
Distribution and grouping	Linear distribution in consecutive rows. Highest concentration of students in the first rings, closest to the area of interest. Four students were out of sight.	Homogeneous distribution, established orthogonally. Traditional layout in consecutive rows with the same number of students.	Distribution of students nearest the area of interest. Radial occupation, around the three sides of the intervention.
Distances from the area of interest	Thirty-one students positioned themselves spontaneously until the fourth ring, corresponding up to 4 meters from the area of interest. Sixteen students were placed up to 2 meters from the area of interest.	The standard classroom provides in the first two rows, which correspond to the first two rings of the patio, 14 positions from the area of interest. A standard classroom for 35 students offers 28 places in the rows that correspond from the first until the fourth ring, or up to 4 meters from the area of interest.	All 35 students were concentrated in the first two rings, up to 2 meters from the area of interest.
Student participation	Active participation of the students located in the first rings. Passive participation of the outermost located students. No participation of students placed out of the field of vision (four students). Induced participation of students that participate in the demonstration of the experiment. Participation of students who timed the oscillation of the swing on their watches.	Passive participation in lectures, vertical transmission of content. Active participation from spontaneous students who show interest in class. Induced participation, when students are requested to work in group, with presentations or inquiries.	Active participation: from all students that were concentrated near the area of interest. Passive participation: from students who reported less interest. Induced participation: from the student that was invited to demonstrate the experiment. Spontaneous participation: from students and teachers who manipulated the object of intervention after the experiment.
Relations between teachers and students	Implicit hierarchy Horizontal relationship Invisible pedagogy	Explicit hierarchy Vertical relationship Visible pedagogy	Implicit hierarchy Horizontal relationship Invisible pedagogy

Classification and Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse

According to Bernstein (2003), in the book titled Class, Codes and Control: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, all pedagogic modalities are generated by the same set of internal rules, whose realizations vary according to their classification and framing values. It is not appropriate to see these modalities as simple dichotomies. They are held to be opposing modalities, translations of power relations, ideologies, and interests of different class factions (Bernstein, 2003).

Bernstein (2003) argues that the major activity of recontextualizing fields constitutes the “what” and “how” of pedagogic discourse. The “what” refers to the categories, contents, and relationships to be transmitted, which is their classification and the “how’” refers to the manner of their transmission, essentially to their framing. The structure refers to the principle governing the communicative practices of social relations within the reproduction of discursive resources, that is between transmitters and acquirers. Control is always present, whatever the principle. What varies is the form the control takes. The form of control is described in terms of its framing (Bernstein, 2003). These concepts can be used to provide codes for the production of physical resources related to learning spaces in accordance with the mode of transmission and acquisition of content.

We can therefore consider the strength of the law in terms of structure: the more fragmented or divisive, the stronger the structure needs to be; the less fragmented or divisive, the weaker the structure is able to be. The relationship between agents has two characteristics: horizontal and vertical. The vertical characteristic refers to the relationship among the agents that are members of different classes; a teacher and a student, for instance. The vertical characteristic can, but not necessarily always, create a hierarchical ordering of relations between categories. It can generate the following relationships between the agents of production in terms of classification principle: very strong classification (C++), the unit is a single agent. An example of classification can be described for the transmission of knowledge by the teacher and the passive acquisition by the students. When the rating is low (−C), the action is the result of integrated agents into categories, for example, in horizontal relationships where knowledge is constructed in a process of interaction among agents. The code (+C + F) of a classification and strong framing relates to a visible teaching. On the other hand, when there is significant weakening of classification and framing (−C − F), the code is transmitted through what we call an invisible pedagogy (Bernstein, 2003).

Results and Discussion

The contemporary school environment consists of open, fluid, and integrated spaces; hence, the figure of the teacher is deconstructed, which suggests an implicit hierarchy, a code that corresponds to an invisible pedagogy (Bernstein, 2003). In this kind of school environment, children are distributed independently. However, they are under teachers’ supervision. In other words, the teacher remains with pedagogical control. As an example, we can consider the space of Vittra Telefonplan School. According to Bernstein’s theory, we can say that the framing of Vittra Telefonplan School is weak (−F); the pedagogical discourse is materialized in the school environment through an open space, which consists of a variety of interconnected themed spaces, each one performing specific educational tasks, corresponding to the metaphors used by Thornburg (2004).

According to Bernstein (2003),

Framing refers to the principle regulating the communicative practices of the social relations within the reproduction of discursive resources that is, between transmitters and acquirers. Where framing is strong, the transmitter explicitly regulates the distinguishing features of the interactional and locational principles, which constitute the communicative context. Where framing is weak, the acquirer has a greater degree of regulation over the distinguishing features of the interactional and locational principles that constitute the communicative context. These distinguishing features will vary according to whether the communicative context is generating physical or discursive resources. If it is the latter, then the distinguishing features would be constituted by the selection, organization (sequencing), pacing, and criteria of the communicants, together with the features of the physical location. Strong framing: the transmitter controls the selection, organization, pacing, criteria of communication and the position, posture, and dress of the communicants, together with the arrangement of the physical location.

This kind of environment encourages behavioral patterns such as interaction, autonomy, and cooperation. These behavioral models are part of pedagogical approaches that arise from theories of learning and cognitive development of the 20th century, such as the sociodevelopment theory developed by Vygotsky (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978) and the constructivism that emerged from Piaget’s theory of knowledge (Munari, 2010). Both theories of socioconstructivist learning had wide-ranging impact on learning theories and teaching methods in education and they are an underlying theme of many education reform movements.

Based on Bernstein’s theory of framing, we analyzed the position of the participants in the two interventions that we have previously described. In the first intervention, the distribution of students appears to be linear, in consecutive rows due to the limitation of the field of vision, which corresponds to the area in front of the plywood boards and of the swing set used. In the second intervention, there is a wider field of vision, and the distribution of students happens to be closer to the working area, covering the access ramp and the sides that are adjacent to the intervention.

In the classroom, the students are confined in walls, and furniture layout defines a homogeneous distribution in consecutive rows for the same number of students. It is important to consider that with a classroom of 52 m² it is almost impossible to arrange 35 tables and seats in any other arrangement different from the teacher-centered one.

In order to compare the distribution of students in the open space (the schoolyard) and in the classroom, we followed these two main questions, addressed to the experiment observation:

With regard to the outdoors students’ distribution: Were they close or far from the objects of intervention (the area of interest)?

Most of the students in both interventions were positioned in the first two rings, which correspond up to 2 meters from the area of interest. In the first intervention, students have positioned themselves up to the fourth ring, which corresponds to 4 meters from the area of interest, while in the second intervention, all students stood up to 2 meters. Inside a standard classroom, the distribution of students covers a distance up to 5 meters from the area of interest, which is potentially further apart than in the experiment situation.

The area per student occupied by standing students (schoolyard) versus sitting students (classroom).

Comparing the area per student in the classroom and the area per student in the schoolyard, we have the following situation:

In the standard classroom specified by the Foundation for the Development of Education, from São Paulo State, Brazil, there are 52 m² for 35 students, which corresponds to approximately 1.48 m² per student. Note that such area corresponds to a sitting student (that occupies approximately 1 m², including furniture area). In the schoolyard, there is a much wider area. In the case study, there are approximately 1,000 m². As there are no boundaries, we could say that there are approximately 28 m² per student (if we take into account the same number of students). Obviously, this is not a fair comparison. By doing this, we only intend to show that in the wide space there may be many patterns of students’ and teachers’ distribution. Also, the wide and open space gives many opportunities for teaching and learning regarding an active methodology.

Conclusion

The use of the schoolyard for educational purposes through low-cost objects showed that it is possible to create situations of active learning using school space that is available, especially space that is often used only for recreation or sports.

Moreover, the use of existing objects (playground equipment) that stimulate body movement showed no need of physical barriers to delimit the use of space and the concentration of students around the areas of interest (areas of intervention). Despite the absence of spatial boundaries, usually made by walls in seminar rooms, the interventions polarized students’ distribution in the courtyard with no loss of pedagogical control.

The case study showed that besides turning the schoolyard space into a potential learning space, the exploration of objects’ affordances and its association with learning strategies, offer innovative possibilities to teach school subjects.

An implicit hierarchy was established in the relationship between teacher and students, since the teacher’s position did not differ spatially from students’ placement, offering freedom for interaction. These characteristics refer to the −C − F code described by Bernstein. The code corresponds to a weak classification and structure in the relationships established between transmitters and acquirers in the teaching–learning space, as opposed to the classroom, where relationships are characterized by explicit hierarchies, vertical relationships, and visible pedagogies.

In the case study, different forms of occupation of the space showed evidence of a weak classification and structure (−C − F), characteristics of invisible pedagogies, as applied at Vittra and at Hellerup schools. This provides a learning environment that leads to interaction, autonomy, and cooperation.

The study showed that the use of the schoolyard as a learning space is possible in schools, even if it is not part of the state educational guidelines. In this sense, planning innovative pedagogical actions and learning strategies was possible through the design of interactive objects, aimed to support learning, by combining both pedagogical and cognitive principles for knowledge transmission. This action led to the reuse of school spaces that were available but that had not been originally designed for teaching and learning to support educational purposes.

Especially for Brazilian public schools, this would be a relevant example to improve the educational system: a strategy that enables an active pedagogical practice unlike the now discredited passive teacher-centered classroom pedagogy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Vanessa Baldin Gallardo

Author Biographies

Vanessa Baldin Gallardo has a BA in architecture and urbanism from the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (2004) and a master’s degree in design from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul–UFRGS (2014). She is currently a PhD student in architecture at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. She works as a Coordinator and Lecturer in the Architecture and Urbanism Course at La Salle University in Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul. She earlier worked as a researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2012-2014).

Benamy Turkienicz has a BA in architecture from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) (1976), a master’s degree in urban design (MA) from the Joint Center for Urban Design–Oxford Polytechnic (1979), a master’s degree in advanced architecture studies (MSc) from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (1981), and a doctorate degree in urbanism (PhD) by Arkitektur S. of Chalmers University of Technology (1982). He is currently a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, a professor of the Department of Architecture at FA-UFRGS, and professor of Post-Graduate Programs and Research in Architecture–PROPAR and Design (PGDesign) at UFRGS.

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