Welcome to my  reflections and learning! For the next 6 months I will be travelling and visiting educational settings around the world. I  have been fortunate to have been awarded the ASB/APPA Travelling Fellowship Award to visit schools in NZ, Australia, Canada, England, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Denmark & Norway to get a better sense of how we can support our teachers and communities move their mindsets from  working in single cell isolated classrooms to collaborative, flexible, and desirably, innovative, working environments. 

Changes to NZ's Ministry of Education policy has seen the building of flexible learning spaces to support the development of innovative learning environments better suited to teaching 21st century pedagogies. However no policy initiatives exist to support schools’ to shift the mindsets of teachers enabling them to work effectively in new collaborative relationships within these shared spaces. 

Westmere School has undergone such a change, rebuilding our 100 year old school into studios that accommodate 2-3 teachers with 60-90 learners. Many schools like ours are asking staff to move from single cell to collaborative environments; often the physical change happens without allowing the space or time to “play and explore ” and for communities to see this is not the same as the failed 1970s “open plan” experiment . 

Unlike some overseas initiatives, where architects have worked alongside educational consultants to consider the pedagogical implications for such building decisions, in NZ it is the principal and senior leadership who have been left with this responsibility.

 I would like to investigate what processes schools and design teams have used to support changing teachers' beliefs and mindsets to enable them to work effectively in collaborative arrangements. My goal is to develop a transition plan for schools - one that is not just about creating an effective design for learning, but a tool that supports  teachers and leadership teams as they move from single cell isolation and independence to effective interdependent relationships and collaborative teaching within innovative learning environments.

I look forward to sharing my  learning and explorations with you over the next six months!