Teachers as placemakers: how primary school teachers design, manage and maintain learning spaces as part of their daily workflow
PhD Thesis
Title | Teachers as placemakers: how primary school teachers design, manage and maintain learning spaces as part of their daily workflow |
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Type | PhD Thesis |
Authors | |
Author | Hughes, Stephen J. |
Supervisor | Pretty, Grace |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
Qualification Name | Doctor of Philosophy |
Number of Pages | 247 |
Year | 2014 |
Abstract | This inquiry is a hypothesis generating study that explores how a group of fifteen primary school teachers across five sites in rural Queensland, Australia, design, manage and maintain learning spaces, as they go about the business of their daily work. The study uses qualitative data in the form of photographs taken by the participants and in-depth interviews using photo-elicitation methods, to generate a substantive theory that accounts for how the participants engage in placemaking. Placemaking is proposed as an integrating concept to explain theoretically, how participants achieve their central purpose in relation to learning space design, management and maintenance. The application of the holistic, contextual, transactional and systems oriented perspective from environmental psychology, is a key contribution of this study. Given the important social functions of schools, the public capital invested in education facilities, and the shift from 20th to 21st century learning environments being driven by social, economic, technological and political factors, furthering our understanding of how the occupants of school spaces experience these spaces is considered a worthy endeavour. In the past decade, there has been an increased interest in the design of learning spaces presumed to improve learning, especially academic outcomes for students. This interest has sparked a range of investigations across the economically developed world into how environmental variables influence learning. Scant attention has been given to how the same environments affect the behavior of teachers who have agency to design, manage and maintain the learning spaces in which they operate in on a daily basis. The aim of this study is understanding how teachers think about and act in learning spaces to achieve the outcomes of schooling they strive for on behalf of students and the community. Primary school teachers in the context of their daily design, management and maintenance of learning spaces form the substantive field for this investigation as these teachers are often allocated bounded spaces for significant periods of time and with the same cohorts of students. The term, main concern, in this context refers to the intentions of participants and how they achieve these intentions through categories of behaviour. ‘Main concern’ is used as a technical term consistent with Glaserian grounded theory methodology. |
Keywords | teacher, primary school, learning, workflow, |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 390499. Specialist studies in education not elsewhere classified |
390304. Primary education | |
Byline Affiliations | School of Psychology, Counselling and Community |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q3143/teachers-as-placemakers-how-primary-school-teachers-design-manage-and-maintain-learning-spaces-as-part-of-their-daily-workflow
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