Wagner's Questions #5 & #6: Physical Space and Creativity

• How do we both support our educators and hold them more accountable for results? What changes are needed in how educators are trained, how they work together in schools, and how they are supervised and evaluated in order to enable them to continuously improve?

• "What do good schools look like?"
  

While these two questions posed by Tony Wagner in The Global Achievement Gap suggest multiple avenues of complex thought, I will begin addressing them in a discussion of space—somewhat of a continuation of recent discussion about the importance of visual surroundings for young children.

In the past few months, I have read or scanned several books and articles on fostering creativity and innovation in work groups. Nearly all of them mention the role of physical space.

"Create a space or place to play," say Gundry and Lamantia in Breakthrough Teams for Breakneck Times (2001). One example they provide: "Lucent Technologies has dedicated 1200 square feet of precious conference room space to creativity. The space has purple walls and a floor to ceiling white board for mind mapping and connection making. A full library of books, magazines, video and audio tapes gives people a place to come, relax, and reenergize."

In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelly of IDEO (a leading industrial design firm) calls the work space a "greenhouse." They have all kinds of bins with various items to look at and play with as they develop concepts. They also constantly rearrange their work space to fit projects and create common areas where employees can collaborate.

In Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (1996), John Kao also discusses space: "Places or spaces that facilitate creativity in their organizations are safe, casual, liberating. Not so small as to be limiting, not so big as to kill intimacy. Creature comfortable, stimulating, free of distractions and intrusions. Not too open, not too closed; sometimes time-bound, sometimes not."

Finally, getting outside of the workplace boundaries is a common theme in the books I've read. In Ideaspotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea, Sam Harrison says it best: "Nobody spots great ideas in cold offices. So why sit there?"

I think schools should set aside some areas to explore experimental approaches to space. They should be designed for project-based learning, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and creative thinking. There should be some space for solitude, for playing with ideas and tools, and for social interaction. The space should be reconfigurable and personalized by groups that use them. There should be outdoor classrooms, as well as areas in the community that are regularly used for intensive learning experiences.

An excellent report on the National Summit on School Design, published by the American Architectural Foundation and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, echoes some of the themes I've seen in my reading. The report describes schools that are designed to accommodate different learning styles and that connect to the outdoors in new ways.

There's also a good article on the National Education Association Website for a quicker overview.