education classroom design and literacy development

An English classroom can be carefully designed to cultivate an atmosphere conducive to multiple literacies. The key elements to classroom design include overall design elements including layout of furniture, lighting, and the controls on sound and noise. Other critical components include technologies and tangible tools to encourage hands-on learning and interactive engagement with material. The curricula, pedagogical tools, and learning strategies might be able to inform some elements of classroom design, but other elements may remain immutable.

Therefore, instructors focusing on English literacy need to be adaptable and flexible, making the most of their environments and overcoming its limitations. In fact, students can become actively involved in the dynamics of the learning environment, which may increase motivation and empowerment (Phillips, 2014). Social learning theories and constructivism both provide theoretical frameworks to guide intelligent, participative, and evidence-based classroom design. Likewise, cognitive science offers tremendous insight into ideal methods of classroom design.

This vision statement of an English classroom reflects ultimate goals in a literacy-focused environment, including collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. The instructor needs to create a learning environment conducive to responsiveness, from both teacher and peers. Responsiveness is a process whereby students in the classroom can feel heard, empowered to voice their questions, and also give constructive feedback to their peers.

To ensure responsiveness is built into the modeling of the classroom, the following elements need to be taken into consideration: assessment, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (“Learning Environment Design,” n.d.). Technological tools can also help with each of these components, as with the development of digital assessment or learning tools, or the creation of collaborative game-oriented exercises. The social learning theories of Lev Vygotsky provide the most reliable method for conceptualizing a collaborative and “active learning community” in each classroom (Neff, n.d., p. 1).

Vygotsky’s theory undergirds classroom design that “maximizes the learner's ability to interact with each other through discussion, collaboration, and feedback,” (Neff, n.d., p. 1). Discussion is encouraged via the arrangement of seats as well as by scheduled time for interactivity. Collaboration occurs through exercises and pedagogical methods, while feedback can combine feedback from teacher, peers, and self-assessment methods. In addition to social learning theories, constructivism provides a framework for optimal classroom design to stimulate literacy.

As Land, Hannafin & Oliver (2012) point out, “shifts in the learning-design-technology landscape required corresponding shifts in theoretical and design frameworks,” (p. 3). Therefore, the integration of various elements reflect different dimensions of learning. Each student will construct their own literacy experiences through their unique engagement with the classroom environment, other students, and the material. A student-centered environment is flexible and responsive, taking into account the diverse backgrounds, abilities, needs, and preferences of the students.

Research highlights the importance of “rich, authentic learning contexts over isolated, decontextualized knowledge and skill,” (Land, Hannafin & Oliver, 2012, p. 4-5). Therefore, the learning environment in an English literacy room needs to include verbal as well as pictorial and multimedia cues. The soundscape also needs to be considered, either to minimize distractions or to include audio elements that enhance the instructional material. Literacy is multifaceted and complex, requiring a classroom that is equally as supportive of multiple learning styles.

Exercises that include discursive practices, dialogue, and even role playing may also be helpful, requiring flexible arrangement of seats and even the incorporation of staging areas. Literacy can be cultivated via various tools, methods, and technologies. Gaming has become widely accepted and integrated into literacy-oriented English classrooms (Squire, 2011). Not only do games make the material more meaningful for more students; games also allow for novel means of encountering literacy prompts and exercises. As educational gaming evolves, teachers need to incorporate games more and more into their learning environments.

Research in cognitive science is especially helpful in illuminating why and how teachers can include games into their repertoire. For example, conceptual mapping and gestural interfaces are part of embodied interaction and learning in a literacy-oriented classroom (Black, Segal, Vitale, et al, 2012). When the classroom is designed to foster literacy development, diversity considerations are always going to be salient. Learners will come from various backgrounds, with some encountering English as a foreign language.

Dornyei (2016) draws on the principles of cognitive science to show the differences between implicit and explicit instruction and building conceptual bridges. Even when technological tools are unavailable, the instructor can capitalize on cognitive science methods to enable conceptual mapping. Literacy instruction depends on the connections between different concepts and ideas, via the principles of signs, semiotics, and language construction. A comprehensive vision of a classroom includes the occasional creation of educational zones. Different zones helps to stimulate collaborative learning in small group activities (“New Teachers: Designing Learning Environments,” 2015).

Although teachers should not rely on zones to the exclusion of other methods, zones can help students who thrive better in small groups than in larger group communication formats. Recognizing different personality traits and learning preferences, teachers can help all students to master material within a competency-based framework (Schumacher, Englander & Carraccio, 2013). Self-determination theory also highlights the need to build into the environment stimulants for self-directed learning and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators are less effective at stimulating long-term literacy development than the cultivation of intrinsic motivation (Schumacher, Englander & Caraccio, 2013).

Therefore, teachers need to construct environments that encourage intrinsic motivation. This can be achieved through the use of technology or through collaborative learning strategies that encourage peers to be accountable to each other. Finally, the theory of multiliteracies helps teachers reflect on appropriate literacy methods and classroom design. Visual literacy, semiotics, oral, and written literacies evolve differently, necessitating creative and dynamic classrooms. For this reason, a vision of an ideal classroom creates “multimodel” means of creating meaning (Cope & Kalantzis, 2002, p. 5).

A teacher embarking on new classroom design can develop a long-term vision for how to recognize the value of multimodal literacies. Cultural competencies and literacies can be integrated alongside traditional literacy training such as language comprehension. The development of new multimodal models of classroom design has the potential to be transformative. An instructor can facilitate communication between students, and between student.