Stay at home, wash your hands, keep updated with LEaRN this winter.
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As we experience a winter like no other, our team at LEaRN hopes you are keeping well and taking care, wherever you are.
In this issue
- Celebrating Kenn Fisher's contributions to LEaRN
- Completing PhD researchers at LEaRN
- Welcome new PhD - Hayley Paproth
- Talking Spaces 10 postponed until 2021
- Building Connections project updates
- ILETC project updates
- Plans to Pedagogy project updates
- Learning Spaces and Special Education Needs project updates
- LEaRN@Home Crowdsourcing highlights
- Recent publications by LEaRN team
Celebrating Kenn Fisher's contributions to LEaRN
After over a decade with the University of Melbourne’s Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN), Associate Professor Kenn Fisher is finishing his part-time role with our Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. We celebrate Kenn’s successes and contributions to our understanding of learning space design and occupation. Read more >>
Completing PhD researchers
We are pleased to announce Dion Tuckwell successfully presented his PhD completion seminar in April and wish him well as he finalises his thesis. Dion’s doctoral research asks: how might design learning give form to the social imagination of teacher practice? This practice-led research has facilitated generative conversations with stakeholders, re-positioning the expertise of the designer and design research.
Chris Bradbeer | Completion Seminar on Zoom, 29 June 2020
We are also pleased to congratulate our ILETC Project Research Fellow and Associate Principal of Stonefields School, Chris Bradbeer, on his PhD completion seminar – successfully delivered via Zoom at the end of June. Chris’ research investigates teacher collaboration in Innovative Learning Environments. Mark Osbourne has also recently conducted his PhD Completion Seminar, ‘Change leadership when transitioning to innovative learning environments’. Mark’s practice-led research employs an analytic autoethnographic methodology to answer the question 'What practices are most likely to lead to the successful implementation of ‘innovative learning environments’ in schools?'
See further details on our completing PhD researchers' project.
New PhD joining LEaRN
Hayley Paproth joins the Building Connections team as a PhD Candidate in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne. Hayley will be evaluating the social impact of community hub schools, seeking to identify cases of improved social outcomes due to community hub schools, and the factors that lead to this success. She will also investigate ways to support community hub schools to conduct their own monitoring and evaluation.
Hayley holds a Bachelor of Engineering, a Bachelor of Science, a Masters of Teaching, and a Masters of Evaluation and has over 7 years’ experience as a teacher and leader in Victorian schools. She also has experience in diverse evaluation projects, including managing large-scale projects being conducted for the Victorian Department of Education and Training, as part of her work with the Centre for Program Evaluation at the University of Melbourne.
Talking Spaces 10 postponed to 2021
We are sad to announce that we have recently made the difficult decision to postpone Talking Spaces 10 - User Experience of Learning Spaces to 2021 to ensure the health and safety of our communities.
In the meantime, please encourage your network to follow us on Twitter or forward this email to them to subscribe to our newsletter.
We are all in this together!
A scene we'll miss this year -
Talking Spaces 9 (Feb 2019)
Building Connections updates
Building Connections team at the 7 May 2020 workshop delivered via Zoom
Building Connections has enjoyed a busy quarter since the autumn Newsletter.
Since early March, our resourceful team has leveraged technology to conduct virtual fieldwork in the form of interviews and workshops, and to attend conferences
With ethics approvals in place, scoping interviews are helping to contextualise and situate the research in Australia and draw our attention to informative sites and people for future field research.
In May, we ran the first Schools as Community Hubs Development Framework workshop. Originally intended as a face-to-face format in Brisbane, the transition to an online event enabled the inclusion of highly informed participants from South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.
In late June 2020, team members presented to the virtual International Association of People-Environment Studies (IAPS) Conference in Quebec, Canada.
New people have joined our team.
We recently welcomed Hayley Paproth as our third PhD candidate, working on a project evaluating schools as community hubs. Hayley joins PhD candidates Natalie Miles and Carolina Rivera Yévenes. We hope to welcome our fourth PhD candidate to the team soon.
In May we farewelled Dr Sianan Healy and welcomed Sarah Backhouse as the new Building Connections Project Manager. We thank Sianan for creating such solid project foundations.
We are now finalising our Schools as Community Hubs International Conference.
Following our call for abstracts last November, we accepted 15 high-quality abstracts from locations including Baltimore, Adelaide, Philadelphia and Melbourne. We are excited to bring together speakers and attendees for a thought provoking and informative event. Registrations will open early August.
ILETC Updates
The ILETC Project has entered its final six months, with the project team consolidating the analysis of the cumulative findings of the project in preparation for producing the final reports. We anticipate the release of a beta version of the Teachers’ Spatial Transition Pathway – a key project output – in the coming months and are planning to showcase the full breadth of the ILETC work at Talking Spaces 11 in 2021.
Mika learning from home (Image courtesy of Fiona Young)
Our ILETC industry partner, Colin Campbell from Saint-Gobain Ecophon, has recently published a short piece on the ILETC blog discussing some case studies of acoustics in learning spaces in Germany and the Netherlands. Read more about this important yet often over-looked aspect of learning space design.
The ILETC PhD researchers have also been busy, with several close to submitting their theses for examination. In addition, Fiona Young has recently published some relevant and timely work on co-creating learning spaces in the time of COVID. Read more about how ‘experts’ might learn from children’s experiences of school from home.
Plans to Pedagogy (P2P) Update
We are pleased to congratulate P2P's
Dr. Joanne Blannin on her new role at Monash University, working in digital learning research. We thank Jo for her amazing work for the Plans to Pedagogy project and wish her all the best in her new adventures!
In the meantime, please contact
A/Prof Wesley Imms for any P2P enquiries or expression of interest in involving in the project.
Learning Spaces and Special Education Needs Update
The LS + SEN project is progressing despite the inherent limitations of the current situation. Interviews with key stakeholders have provided a range of insights directly informing the project's next steps. A systematic literature review has recently been conducted. This has culminated a robust database of articles informing the project through the next few years. The review has been developed into a journal article that will be submitted in the coming months. We are also aiming to publish the broader literature review list as a contribution to the field of research.
The project working group, including academic and industry experts, met in late July via Zoom. As always, the group provided informed guidance as we seek to develop the LE + SEN research trajectory across the coming years.
LEaRN@Home Crowdsourcing Highlights
When the first wave of remote learning and teaching started in Victoria, Australia where we're based, we've created the LEaRN@Home Initiative where we asked our colleagues, educators, teachers, researchers and parents all over the world to contribute to our Padlet for ideas to make the home learning environments better.
Below are some of our favourites! If distant learning is back on where you are (like us here in Melbourne), we want to hear from you!
Recent publications
Conference ProceedingsWhat is involved in making the journey from traditional to innovative learning environments? Proceedings of international symposium Transitions19: One journey, many pathwaysImms, W. & Mahat, M. (2020)The Transitions19 Symposium proceedings showcases a selection of the research presented at the Transitions19: One journey, many pathways event (held in Melbourne in October 2019), which brought together 127 participants from 12 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and the United States of America. The volume provides a rich and diverse collection of international research and practice related to innovative learning environments. Download your copy › |
ReportSchools as Community Hubs Development Framework - Workshop 1: Emerging themes & insightsChandler, P. & Cleveland, B. (2020)On 7 May 2020, the Building Connections: Schools as Community Hubs ARC Linkage Project team facilitated an ambitious
stakeholder workshop via Zoom. |
Other publicationsThe ILETC team has also added two other publications to its extensive body of work. These are: Leighton, V. & Byers, T. (2020) All innovative learning environments have one factor in common: A spatially active teacher. Australian Education Leader (AEL), Vol 42, Term 1 2020 Mahat, M., & Imms, W. (2020). The space design and use survey: Establishing a reliable measure of educators’ perceptions of the use of learning environments. The Australian Educational Researcher, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-020-00382-z |
Conference Paper |
Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN)
The University of Melbourne
VIC 3010 Australia
sites.research.unimelb.edu.au/learn-network
CRICOS Provider Code: 00116k
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The University of Melbourne
