Active Learning Teaching in Active Learning Classrooms
Are flexible open teaching spaces with movable walls and furniture superior to traditional classrooms?
In the previous post, I discussed “The Small Learning Community” developed by Prakash Nair, Randall Fielding, and Jeffery Lackney. They design schools with active learning environments and promote active learning teaching techniques. They assert that their “Small Learning Community” aka “Active Learning Environment” or “Active Learning Classroom” is superior to a traditional classroom where seats are in rows and the teacher instructs. Because the phrase, “Active Learning Classroom” is used commonly in the literature and the phrase “The Small Learning Community” is not as common, I will use the phrase Active Learning Classroom (ALC) in this article. Please read the previous post if you have not done so already.
Subsequently, a reader drew my attention to an article by Melissa Swisher, “The Relative Importance of Physical Space in the Classroom”, who wondered:
“Once instructors learn about course design and effective instructional methods (choral responding, response cards, and guided notes; see Twyman & Heward, 2018) and understand that they don’t need an active learning classroom or access to the most advanced technology, they can help their learning without needing to rearrange the physical environment. Rather than access to active learning classrooms, it would help instructors and their learners to educate and support effective course design practices.” (page 4).
In other words, since it can cost over $100,000 to transform a traditional classroom for 30 students into an Active Learning Environment (Park Choi (2014) wouldn’t it be better to take that money and use it instead to improve teachers’ teaching techniques? Let’s review the research and see if Active Learning Environments are worth the money.
Active Learning Teaching
Active Learning Classrooms are in universities, high schools, middle schools, and primary schools. In primary school, it’s important to use active learning techniques that are age-appropriate, engaging, and promote foundational skills. Here are some active learning teaching techniques suggested for elementary school students:
Interactive Storytelling: Encourage students to participate in storytelling by taking turns adding to a collaborative story. This promotes creativity, vocabulary development, and listening skills.
Role play and dramatic play can help students understand characters and events in stories of historical contexts.
Outdoor Learning: Take lessons outdoors, such as how to germinate seeds and grow sunflowers.
Games and Educational Apps: Incorporate age-appropriate educational games and apps on iPads or computers to reinforce math, reading, vocabulary, and other skills.
Art: Integrate art projects into lessons to encourage creativity and reinforce learning. Students can create visual representations of the concepts they are studying.
Music and Movement: Teach dance movements.
Show and Tell: Students talk about items brought from home.
Science experiments: Age-appropriate science experiments that students can participate in, such as growing plants, exploring magnets, or making simple chemical reactions.
Collaborative story writing. Have students work in pairs or small groups.
Field Trips: Venture off to the Local Botanical Garden or Fire House.
Peer Teaching: Allow students to teach each other a concept they mastered.
Of course, these are only some of the unlimited number of “active learning” activities teachers and students can use. The question remains, are these kinds of activities sufficient for children to learn foundational skills, such as: reading (encoding & decoding), reading comprehension, vocabulary expansion, and basic math skills (addition & subtraction, multiplication & division, fractions, order of operations, and so on)?
In previous posts, I recommended Direct Instruction curricula for Reading, Math, Language, and Writing. Can Direct Instruction, a teacher-directed form of instruction be compatible with an Active Learning Classroom designed for student-directed activities? Sure. I’ve looked at the designs of the ALCs developed by Fielding International. It does not appear difficult to run a Direct Instruction Reading or Math group. A space could be carved out easily.
Janet Twyman and William Heward (2016) provide three suggestions to improve teacher effectiveness namely, choral responding, response cards, and guided notes. Choral responding is commonly used with Direct Instruction Curricula. Students respond in unison to a teacher’s signal, an effective way to develop group participation. Response cards are index cards that students raise to display their answers to teacher questions: yes/no, true/false, adjective/adverb, fill in the blank, and so on. The third recommendation, guided notes, serves two functions: 1) the student listens, looks, thinks, and writes notes; and 2) the student takes the notes and provides a summary of the content for later study. The student learns to attend to relevant versus irrelevant information. All of Twyman & Heward’s techniques have research findings demonstrating their effectiveness. Their techniques can be used easily in an Active Learning Classroom.
Token Economies. Token Economies are used frequently in traditional classroom settings. Completing math, spelling, language, reading, and writing assignments are often reinforced with points which can be traded in for privileges around the school or for prizes (Kazdin 1977). Token economies can be used in Active Learning Classrooms or traditional classrooms. Even, complex token systems such as LearnBall can be used in an ALC.
In my operant mind, I see the ALC as a flexible shell that can house any theory of education. Personally, I don’t believe that active learning teaching techniques as listed above are sufficient in developing solid fundamental academic skills in children. More rigorous teaching methods are required. In an ALC there is room for both. Hopefully, additional research will bring more light than heat on this topic.
ALC Literature Review
Robert Talbert from Grand Valley State University and Anat Mor-Avi published a review of research on active learning spaces. Active Learning Classrooms are specially designed to support Active Learning Teaching in students from preschool through college. They reviewed research from 2004 to 2017. Thirty-two studies involved University settings; 2 studies examined primary and secondary schools, 1 other study took place at an elementary school and 2 took place at a high school. He looked for answers to the following questions:
What effects do ALCs have on metrics of academic achievement?
What effects do ALCs have on student engagement?
What effect do ALCs have on the teaching techniques used and the behavior of the instructor?
What design elements of ALCs contribute to the effects above?
This is what they found:
ALCs are associated with improved student outcomes whether the dependent variables “are traditional quantitative measures such as exams and course grades or measures of 21st Century skills”. All of the studies in their review revealed improved student outcomes for students in ALCs or there was no difference between the ALC and the traditional classroom. No one reported lower results for an ALC group. Several studies obtained the most pronounced results among low-achieving and minority students.
Students report a preference for ALCs compared to a traditional space, plus increased motivation to attend class. ALCs provide frequent interactions and deepened relations with peers and teachers. Students report a sense of community and belonging.
Teachers in ALCs change their teaching practices and their verbal behavior about their role as instructors. They tend to use active learning activities more in the ALC than in the traditional classroom. They make use of movable tables, vertical writing surfaces, and computer technologies in their teaching.
ALCs shape the way teachers use the space, how the teachers interact with each other, and how they talk about the teaching techniques used in the space in a positive way. Teachers like to teach in ALCs.
Students report that learning in ALCs is more fun than in traditional classrooms.
ALCs result in enhanced student engagement. Students view their teachers as better teachers when in an ALC.
Students feel more connected to each other and to the teacher. The ALC can be used to form a community of learners, where all learn from each other.
Finally, I’d like to discuss an article by Qiang Hao, Bradley Barnes, and Mengguo Jing (2020) from Western Michigan University. They are one of the few researchers who separated the effects of the physical aspects of the ALCs from the teaching techniques used. They found that “active learning and teaching was significantly beneficial to computer science students’ academic performance”. “Although students studying in active learning classrooms tended to attend the course more frequently and perform better than their counterparts in lecture halls, the difference was not found to be significant”. “Simply assigning students to ALCs may not bring the intended effects”. As mentioned above, the teaching techniques used in the space are important also.
Summary
It’s a matter of priorities. If my school was severely run down and my budget was small my first priority would be to put the building back in shape. Second, I would spend money on teacher training and purchasing effective curricula. My third priority would be to re-model the school along ALC guidelines compatible with my teaching approach. If I had enough money to build a school from scratch, I’d follow the Active Learning Classroom approach and use behavioral teaching techniques within that building.
If my child attended a private school designed by Prakash Nair but used curriculum authored by Mary Clay or Lucy Calkin students would learn to guess but not read very well. Nor would they learn their math facts very well if they relied upon a spiral math curriculum. A great school building with ineffective curricula is not a solution. Well-trained teachers using effective curricula in a well-designed school is obviously best.
When effective teaching techniques are used, students in both ALCs and traditional classrooms perform well. ALCs are amenable to Direct Instruction and other behaviorally oriented teaching techniques. Teachers report that they prefer teaching in ALCs over traditional classrooms. Students report that they prefer learning in ALCs. The personal relationships among teachers; teachers and students; and among students themselves seem more positive in ALCs. There is more of an opportunity for improvisation in an ALC. Improvisation acts as a catalyst to create something new. Are ALCs worth the money? If you have the money, yes, I think so.
References
Kazdin, A., The Token Economy (1977) Plenum Press
Heo, Q., Barnes, B., & Jing, M. (2019). Quantifying the effects of active learning environments: separating physical learning classrooms from pedagogical approaches. Learning Environments Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-020-09320-3
Talbert, R. & Mor-Avi, A. (2018) A space for learning: A review of research on active learning spaces. https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/71190086/download-libre.pdf?1633318684=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DA_Space_for_Learning_A_review_of_researc.pdf
Nair, P., Fielding, R., Lackney, J. (2013) The language of school design: Design patterns for 21st-century schools. Designshare.com
Nair, P. (2014) Blueprint for Tomorrow: Redesigning schools for student-centered learning. Harvard Education Press
Twyman, J., Heward, W. L. (2018) How to improve student learning in every classroom now. International Journal of Educational Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.05.007