Addressing the Socio-Spatial Challenges of Innovative Learning Environments for Practicum: Harmonics for Transitional Times

Abstract

A shift to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) in New Zealand schools is a current Ministry of Education strategic direction challenging how we as teacher educators prepare candidate teachers (student teachers or trainee teachers) to teach in these emerging environments. Candidate teachers in our primary teaching degree increasingly are placed in ILEs on practicum as these develop in schools in our geographic area. Our students report anecdotally that teaching in ILEs poses them steep and novel challenges around how they plan, teach, assess, manage students and learning, as well as work collaboratively with associate teachers and, increasingly, other colleagues. With our current programme underpinned by a more conventional image of teaching and learning, and schools transitioning between conventional and arguably more innovative, bespoke environments, we wondered how our students navigated the novel pedagogical and physical configurations they encountered in ILEs on practicum. We conducted focus group interviews with our candidate teachers and recent graduates who had completed one or more practicum in an innovative learning environment (as defined by the practicum school). We explored participants’ perceptions of the particular demands ILEs created for them. Utilising Lefebvre’s (The production of space. Trans. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1991) socio-spatial trialectic and Monahan’s (Built pedagogies & technology practices: designing for participatory learning. Palo Alto, CA, 2000) notion of “built pedagogy” in this chapter we identify key socio-spatial entanglements, or harmonics, that emerge from our analysis and explore how these inform how we might better prepare our candidate teachers in these transitional times.