Classroom Studio
As I begin to think more and more about what I want my classroom to evolve towards, I keep coming back to ideas of studio, which is something that I considered last year.
Studios are places that are intense, both product and process oriented, and in many ways, are driven forward by the people who are working in them. Many projects are self - selected, or organic, growing out of experience and idea. Assessment comes from both external and internal sources. Assessments looks at both the products and the process that were involved in production.
Architects, artists, designers, graphic artists, ?, ?, ?
Who all works in a studio?
Many of these industries obviously involve visual arts. What makes these occupations different from others? Have they simply evolved towards this direction? Are studios "accepted" and honoured in these professions simply because people are used to them and they are the usual way of doing business?
What would be the advantages of setting up classrooms as studios of practice? The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that Daniel Pink has told us in a Whole New Mind that test scores go up 11 points simply by redesigning classrooms to better designs. Classrooms as studios would hopefully be more attractive visually then our usual concrete boxes, but the biggest change would come in the pedagogy. More self selected projects, students working in longer blocks of concentrated time, changes made to assessment practices. Studios are busy places. Not noisy, out of control, anti - education and learning spaces, but busy, productive spaces with different activities going on; something that we often aren't used to in classrooms.
Studios are usually flexible time wise, with activities ebbing and flowing. Studios are not spaces which are constantly interrupted with streams of bells and announcements. Studios are places where the work is interesting and involved, where we get into ideas of flow, and where time moves by naturally. Obviously, many of these ideas are in many ways, the opposite of what the structured rituals in many schools look like, but I think it is a very powerful model for twenty first century learning and classrooms, something I'm going to be looking into deeper.
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