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Learning at Play: Notes from the Field
2021-03-04 ICCSD

 

By Anouchka van DrielPeople's Works Innovation Lead, People's Architecture Office

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Part 1  Project Description

The Plugin Learning Loft is an initiative started by People's Architecture Office (PAO) to research the potential of loft spaces to drive cognitive and social development in young learners through an open and collaborative design process. The project is established against the backdrop of significant changes taking place in China's education landscape1. Aligning with new ambitions and education policies, the project facilitates the implementation of STEAM and other innovative curricula with more opportunities for self-directed learning and learning through play.

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Artist's impression of the Plugin Learning Loft used in a classroom setting

Illustration: People's Architecture Office

Since 2018 People's Architecture Office has been investigating the education landscape through working on several school design projects in both urban and rural China. Through understanding the context and difficulties a design proposition emerged – what if there was another factor that could support the ambitions for more creative education without having to rely too much on the development of educators, large scale school overhauls and expensive innovation curricula. What if the spatial environment could be more intensely used as a third teaching dimension, through small scale spatial interventions. As such, spatial learning tools and formats that can be easily replicated, could allow teachers to leverage the important link between space and learning, and more easily integrate innovative learning methods. This relation between the design of spatial environments and the learning results is more than just speculation and is also backed by recent scientific studies. A 2015 research showed that modifying certain key elements of classroom design would improve student learning outcomes by 16 percent.

Responding to this proposition PAO developed the Plugin Learning Loft. It works as a modular system that stimulates creativity and learning through play within a product and spatial design solution. This spatial learning format is currently aimed at early childhood education where there is less emphasis on testing and more opportunity for innovative and playbased learning. It is also an age where the limited motor skills of students mean there are fewer options for creative learning tools.

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Workshop during "Social Design: Learning at Play" exhibition, Design Society, Shenzhen

Photograph: People's Architecture Office

The Plugin Learning Loft is currently a design in progress. It consists of a basic structure and infill materials that connect to it. The sturdy structure addresses safety issues and provides a framework for attachments. Infill options are highly flexible to ensure the Loft is able to meet a very wide range of spatial and functional needs, providing ample options for customization and flexibility.

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Workshop at the Pop-Up Campus as part of the 2019 UABB, Longgang, Shenzhen

Photograph: People's Architecture Office

Throughout the design process the loft is being tested through workshops and environments where the design in process is tried out and improved. PAO has partnered with schools and experts in China and the USA to conduct on-site testing of design concepts. The testing context has a wide reach across the educational spectrum, and not only focuses on working with schools and inside classrooms but also engages with more informal settings such as cultural spaces and festivals. These sessions and outcomes are evaluated and are integrated back into the design through improvements and upgrades.

Early partners in the project are the Leping Social Entrepreneur Foundation and Sunshine Kindergarten in Xian County, Hebei. Leping is working on teacher training and curriculum upgrades and Sunshine Kindergarten is collaborating as a key testing ground for the Plugin Learning Loft in its classroom spaces. In this way we analyze and work with both the needs and desires of the teachers as well as the direct interests of early learners, and engage with the wider network of management and parents, finetuning the design based on interaction and user input. Through trial and error and an iterative co- design process we are able to gain insights and find more ways of leveraging design for positive social impact across the board.

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Sunshine Kindergarten, Xian County, Hebei Province

Photograph: People's Architecture Office

In the US the Loft forms the focus point of the study "Making Learning Vertical": An Investigation of Loft Spaces in Early Childhood Classrooms by Dr. Caitlin Malloy and James Shen in cooperation with the Newtowne School, a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool. Part of the objective there is to gain more data sets and allow for a wider cultural input for the development of the Loft, as well as the wider implications of how space design further informs learning outcomes.

Ultimately, be it on the scale of classroom tools or the larger scale of school building design and campuses, PAO's goal is to create innovative learning environments that foster five key characteristics in children, students and learners throughout the learning landscape: agency, curiosity, individualization, being socially connected and connected to the world. On a changing and transitioning planet, we perceive these traits as crucial for dealing with the complexities to come, both as individuals and as a society on the whole.

Part 2  On-site Notes

This is now the third trip to Xian county, Hebei, where the Sunshine kindergarten is located. Nearly 500 children aged 3-7 are divided over a classic school courtyard with classrooms on either side. The school is part of a larger NGO-driven project to upgrade school curricula and learning environments led by the Leping Social Entrepreneur Foundation. Walking around the kindergarten there is evidence of recent teacher training sessions, as well as a variety of DIY tactics and creativity stemming from limited means and budgets. A long line of string spans the length of a courtyard walkway from which dangle various old pots and pans, lids and other discarded metal items, the basis of an activity exploring sound, music and play. Elsewhere empty boxes of curriculum kits form an architecture and building exploration area inside the classroom. On a pink and green wall are pasted an array of drawings depicting the various parts and mechanisms of everyday machines.

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Courtyard scene, Sunshine Kindergarten, Xian County, Hebei Province

Photograph: People's Architecture Office

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Upper age group classroom, Sunshine Kindergarten, Xian County, Hebei Province

Photograph: People's Architecture Office

On this third trip to the kindergarten we bring along several size and scale tests that are to form the basis of the Plugin Learning Loft. With the aims to create something flexible, scalable, ergonomically suitable for the target age group, as well as a structure that encourages collective activities and play. Headmaster Ming was eager to support us in this endeavour and we set them up in the classroom. Two groups of 6-8 children aged 4-6 are invited to engage in whatever way they want with the structures. With only some minimal prompts from the headmaster the children start to explore the structures and the possibilities of some of the basic infill attached. Some play collaboratively and some individually, and soon we see that likely the sizes we are starting out with are too small for more engaging collective and social play. Though with all the excitement going on the activity goes far beyond a simple test of scale, sparking further explorations into size, function and use.

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Testing the scale models, Sunshine Kindergarten, Xian County, Hebei Province

Photograph: People's Architecture Office

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Still image from video of Plugin Learning Loft first prototype tests, Sunshine Kindergarten, Xian County, Hebei province

Credit: People's Architecture Office

About half an hour before we start, we are still engaged in a long discussion on the exact way and the different steps of how we'll present the task to the group of 18 5-7-year-olds. Working with the experienced team of facilitators from "More than Architect" we discuss the amount of freedom we hope to permit and how this might play out through using a limited or wider number of tools. For the workshop we focus on working with one of the Plugin Learning Loft accessory kits, allowing participants to build their own structures. We decide on leaving one of the more structural parts out of the kit in order to allow more space for imagination, which turns out to be a successful move. Then in the second part of the workshop we are genuinely surprised at what starts to take place, parents as much as their kids get increasingly eager and join in the assignment to create a collective self-built structure from the assembled panels. The result not only surprises us, but everyone involved seems to feel a sense of pride at this unexpected structure that they themselves have created all on their own.

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