Abstract
It is often assumed in the education literature that spaces are either neutral backdrops to teaching and learning or are themselves agents for change such that changed spaces will change practice. In this chapter, I offer a less deterministic and dichotomous account of the space–practice relation. Drawing selectively from new materialist social inquiry and contemporary spatial theory and bringing empirical material collected within museums and schools to bear, the argument is made that space, like learning, is a practice—it is always in a process of being made. Practices of a range of kinds—affective, social and material—play a constitutive role in spaces of learning and account for support of, and challenge to, government and policy priorities with regard to them. In consequence, a more complex, nonlinear model of the space–practice relation is required. Thinking the term learning spaces as something we do (stage, perform, enact ), rather than something we have (infrastructure ) affords acknowledging the multiplicity, mutability and mutual inclusivity of spatial and pedagogic practices. It also invites attention to the politics that play out in them.
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Notes
- 1.
Open and flexible spaces of teaching and learning are fast becoming the strategic option for the building of new schools and educational facilities in a number of countries, including Australia. As Dovey and Fisher (2014, p. 43) claim, these infrastructural changes are ‘largely driven by long-standing changes in pedagogical theory and practice that may be broadly described as a recognition of both formal and informal learning and a move from teacher-centred to student-centred learning’. Similar changes in pedagogic approach have occurred in museum education. The long-standing approach of ‘learning by looking’ is giving way to more embodied and performative (practice-based) pedagogies: ‘Education is now more strongly focused on producing individuals with strong personal identities, strong self-esteem, confidence, and the ability to evaluate and make judgements about their own best interests’ (Hooper-Greenhill, 2007, p. 200). New epistemologies that embrace a constructivist approach to knowledge production now characterise museum education as they do school education.
- 2.
Spatiality expresses ‘the interactive relationship between physical and social space’ (McGregor, 2004a, p. 2).
- 3.
See the home page of Museum Victoria, https://museumvictoria.com.au/, for exhibitions showing at its three facilities.
- 4.
I write in/between with a slash to indicate the interdependence of both physical spaces of learning, and of physical and digital spaces of learning, and reflect their entangled relationship.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
For an account of this installation provided by its creator, see: http://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/discoverycentre/identity/welcome-lynette-wallworth/.
- 8.
The term ‘Collingwood fans’ refers to supporters of an Australian Football League team called Collingwood. Collingwood supporters have a reputation for being working class which, in Australia, can mean ‘bogan’ and feral.
- 9.
Oxfam is an international, not-for-profit, community-based aid and development organisation.
- 10.
Othering is a process that identifies those that are thought to be different from oneself or the mainstream. Potentially, it reinforces and reproduces positions of domination and subordination.
- 11.
The idea of difference lying within draws from Deleuzian philosophy. For Deleuze, difference is, first and foremost, an internal—rather than relational or external—process affording critique of grid-like categories of identity such as sex, gender , colour, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, age and ability ‘because they rely on, and reproduce, an external, negative notion of difference; a difference which consists in its differing from, or in relation to, an “other”’ (Hickey-Moody & Malins, 2007, p. 5, original emphasis).
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Mulcahy, D. (2018). Assembling Spaces of Learning ‘In’ Museums and Schools: A Practice-Based Sociomaterial Perspective. In: Ellis, R., Goodyear, P. (eds) Spaces of Teaching and Learning. Understanding Teaching-Learning Practice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7155-3_2
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