Social action and interaction are inextricably embedded within the material setting. This is exactly the reason why framing is a very relevant concept in examining the material culture of schooling.
According to the definition of framing, it follows that this concept corresponds to the degree of explicitness that the legitimate school code is communicated to its receivers (students). According to Foucault, (1977) schools can be regarded as ‗normalizing‘
institutions exerting power. As Foucault writes: ―[discipline] ‗trains‘ the moving, confused, useless multitudes of bodies and forces them into a multiplicity of individual elements … [and] combinatory segments‖ (1977, p.170).
Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling… 21 Thus, specific technologies of power enacted in school environment create a docile body that can be observed, normalized and ranked, and thus function effectively in the larger social body of which it is a part. Individualizing the bodies of the masses avoids dangerous aggregates and thus creates a more docile, manageable and politically incapacitated human being. For example, in schools, desks are organized in rows and columns, isolating individuals from each other and making them easier to observe.7
Such ‗technologies of power‘ are effective because they permeate multiple facets of school life and thus naturalize power, which makes it difficult to provide surfaces for resistance. The omnipresence and subtlety of the technologies of power, where the locus of power is diffused corresponds to a state of weak framing. However, there are many cases where these technologies of power become easily discernible and detectable by a trained critical eye. These cases correspond to a state where the social control that schooling exerts on its subjects is visible and thus, framing is strong.
Using a combination of the Foucauldian and Bernsteinian theoretical frameworks as a starting point, it could be argued that framing is determined by the degree to which material aspects of schooling can be read as technologies of power attempting to transform young bodies into ‗docile‘ students‘ bodies. These bodies must be trained and internalize the proper conduct in the school environment. In turn, this proper conduct mainly concerns students‘
mobility, modes of work, modes of communication as well as the latter‘s recognition of the hierarchical social relationships within the school community.
Following this line of argumentation, the level of framing promoted by the material culture of a school depends on:
a) how explicitly regulated is the use or to put it differently up to what extent the criteria for competent use of school space and artifacts are both explicit and specific, b) the extent to which students‘ vision and mobility is controlled
c) the extent to which various objects can enter into different relationships to each other and
d) how far the various material aspects of school environment could be ‗read‘ as signifiers of asymmetrical social relationships between teachers (or more generally schools) and students.
As far as the first dimension is concerned the higher the explicitness, the stronger framing. Framing is weak in the case that such regulation is either absent or covert. Bernstein claims that where the criteria for competent usage of the space are both explicit and specific, any deviation on the part of the user from the legitimate use is perceived as ‗pollution‘ which is highly visible and thus easily traced and for this reason penalized (Bernstein, 2007). For example consider the case of a classroom where the desks are put in rows, the books are put in the bookcase in alphabetical order and there are drawers labeled with each student‘s name.
Such a classroom constructs a space where deviance in the form of ‗pollution‘ is highly visible. If a user (student) as much as leaves a personal mark (a failure to replace a book in its original position, a misplacement of his/her belongings to the drawer of another student, a messy arrangement of the desks) this constitutes pollution and such pollution is quickly
7 The spatial segmentation is enhanced by temporal segmentation. A tightly regulated schedule of activities allows for easier management and comparability.
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perceived. Therefore, one could argue that strong framing is equivalent to users‘ (students‘) surveillance.8
This kind of argumentation explains why non-teaching spaces are important because they are less formal than classrooms, are rarely the centre of attention and ‗behind the scenes‘
rather than ‗front of stage‘ (Goffman 1956) and therefore where actors feel out of the spotlight. Moreover, they constitute elements of hidden curricula and how ‗organisations work when no one is looking‘ (Morgan 1997, p.145).
In summary we could argue that a school environment characterized by many embedded explicit and specific criteria of its legitimate use and proper conduct in it signifies strong framing. Material features that might realize this perspective could be: a) color coding of all services, b) signage, c) wall displays echoing the official voice of school9 or d) labeling of artifacts or of proper places these artifacts should be put or stored.
As already mentioned framing is also related to the extent students‘ vision and mobility is controlled by the material arrangements of schooling. Visibility and spatial mobility, as Foucault (1977) has shown, are fundamentally linked to governmentality and control.
Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision. The great advantage of such tunnel vision is that it brings into very sharp focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the centre of the field of vision far more legible, and hence far more susceptible to careful measurement, calculation, and manipulation. A typical example of this narrowing and tunneling of vision is the placement of windows in classrooms. In older school buildings windows were placed at the higher parts of the classroom walls, far beyond students‘ eyesight level (Solomon, 1992). This was a purposeful choice so as not to allow students‘ gaze to be distracted by irrelevant stimuli from the outside world. A similar purpose is served by placing teacher in a central position in the classroom. This position which usually, as we have already seen, coincides with the frontal part of the classroom plays the role of a single focal point which aims at attracting students‘ gazes.
Apart though from the narrowing of vision, explicit control over students and thus strong framing is also realized by material conditions which tend to restrict students‘ mobility. On the contrary, when children‘s movements are self-regulated, school environment is characterized by weak framing. Features of a school environment that can control students‘
mobility are: a) orientation signs10, b) reduced free space (e.g. students are seated in proximity to each other with little space between chairs), c) long and narrow corridors which
8 According to Foucault‘s analysis of schools and other institutions one of the most effective technologies of power rests on the Bentham‘s notion of the panopticon: the capability of surveillance of the many by the invisible few (1977). In the panopticon, bodies are subject to a universal gaze but the inmate never knows for sure when the gaze occurs. The so-called ―Prussian‖ school design, popular from 1873 onwards-both within and outside Germany-and still around today constitutes a typical example of this technology. This type of school has the top half of classroom walls glazed, to allow the headmaster to keep an eye on things (van Leeuwen, 2005).Through this technology of power rendering something noticeable appears to make it potentially problematic and worthy of further inquiry. In a very different vein, Sacks (1972) makes a similar point: ―For Western Societies at least, being noticeable and being deviant seem intimately related. The notion that one is suspect whose appearance is such that he stands out, have the deepest foundations. Indeed, in Judeo-Christian mythology, human history proper begins with the awareness of Adam and Eve, that they are observable. The next bit of social information thereupon we learn is: to be observable is to be embarrassable.‖ (pp. 280).
9 In many schools one can still find wall displays in the form of epigraphs, visual representations, posters or other media containing dictums in the form of guidelines for proper behavior and morale.
10 For example in Kings Avenue Primary School Lambeth a bright colour-coding system including a continuous yellow stripe in the studded rubber corridor flooring, provides orientation (BCSE, 2006).
Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling… 23
impose a specific unidirectional path for everyone and no-one in particular11, d) relatively limited area allocated to non-teaching spaces (e.g. a playground where free motion is allowed), e) restricted number of entrance or exit points, or f) mechanisms of access control (automated doors, photocells, etc).
These features are missing from post modern school buildings. The idea behind the reduced control of students‘ mobility in these buildings is that conditions of increased mobility allows teams to collaborate and also creates chance encounters, often the catalyst for emerging ideas. Spaces in this case are designed for facilitating interaction and brainstorming and encouraging informal communication serendipitous meetings, and impromptu conversations. In such spaces students and teachers who know one another only slightly may detain each other in broad pathways (not corridors) where paths intersect in an almost random way.
Apart from the control of vision and motion in school, framing is also related to families of items, which are significantly linked and "exposed" to social communication within "social spaces" (Baudrillard,1972; Bourdieu, 1979). In such a "social space" not only does each object have a denotation in itself, but it assumes special meanings deriving from the linkage to other objects, while the linking pattern is significant. As far as the linking patterns of school objects are concerned, the greater the number of different relationships these objects can enter into with each other the weaker the framing.
In this case weak framing corresponds to flexibility and adaptability as principles of organizing the material culture of schooling, thus empowering students to gain more control over its configuration. On the other hand strong framing corresponds to invariability and stability, which in turn mean that students are negated to challenge a defined and pre-organized arrangement of their material environment. To put it differently school spaces characterized by weak framing tend to be organized around the principles of variability, reconfigurability, personalization thus bringing the learning subjects into the foreground.
Instead spaces promoting strong framing tend to be organized around the principles of serialisation, standardisation, and duplication thus bringing the absolute nature of the objects into the foreground.
The flexibility and adaptability of the material aspects of schooling is delineated with pedagogies that should be tailored to the subject, the learners, and the intended outcomes.
Student needs and learning preferences vary as well. Spaces that are flexible, accommodating different approaches and uses, improve the odds for effective learning.
Flexible spaces are defined by OECD as places that can adapt quickly and inexpensively to changes in the curriculum, to evolving pedagogical theory and practice, to the demands of the school community, and to the fast developments in ICT (CABE, 2007). In addition to the aforementioned requirements, flexible and minimally designed or even undersigned places are in accordance with learned centered pedagogies of post-modern schooling. According to numerous studies modification and access to natural un-designed areas were found to be important preferences for children (Francis, 1988). It is exactly this type of spaces that children seem to appropriate in the most dynamic way, expressing a desire to modify and change the landscape and an interest in claiming found spaces as their own (Day, 2007). On the contrary adults have been found to prefer more traditional environments which are safe, neat, and fixed.
11 According to Koolhaas, (1994) corridors are intentionally asocial, and sociofugal.
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Similar trends for more flexibility can be also traced in the design of workplaces.
Specifically, workplaces today and in the future need to offer flexibility of both space and personnel, breaking away from hierarchical patterns of the past. They become dynamic to allow the interchange of ideas and maximum communication which will in turn inspire creative thought and dynamic interaction to generate innovative ideas (Anjum, Paul and Ashcroft, 2005).
The shift of organisational set up from a static hierarchical structure to a more fluid team-working arrangement implies the need for simplicity and flexibility in furniture design as well. For example many pieces of furniture in school buildings are modular and suspended from demountable partitions. The original iron desks have been replaced by wheeled light desks.
Under the influence of this generalized organizational culture nowadays school buildings are designed with some features intended to maximize flexibility. The school building is never finished; members of the school community experience it and re-build it over time.
This ongoing adaptation of the school environments is also aligned with a more general trend of an increased interest in user participation in the shaping of living environments. There is growing conviction in a number of quarters that the child‘s view on learning environments should be considered (Burke and Grosvenor, 2003; Clark et al., 2003; DfES, 2002).12
In a flexible and adaptable school environment one can find elements like: easily movable objects (e.g. light or wheeled furniture, movable displays)13, variability of learning environments, temporary use surfaces (e.g. temporary writing surfaces), adjustable lighting, temperature or sound volume or demountable partitions.
Finally, framing has to do with the extent social relations between students and school as an institution are explicitly hierarchical in nature. The more explicitly hierarchical these relations are, the stronger the framing becomes. However, social hierarchical relationships could be signified by a variety of material aspects. It is commonplace in studies of material culture that different objects, materials, or characteristics like size, shine, style, etc can act as signifiers of differentiated social status. For example, a teacher‘s luxurious leather chair contrasted with his/her students wooden cheap chairs could become a symbol of his/her superior status and authority. In addition, important data about individual or group space is directly related to membership or status: the amount and kind of space allocated to a member of a cultural system reflects his/her status in the structure of that system. For instance, the area of space allocated to teacher in the classroom of Figure 6, being relatively larger than those allocated to each individual student could be read as a marker of the superior social position of the former with respect to the latter. Similar significations of hierarchical social relationships could be realized by a marked differentiation between the dressing codes of teachers (i.e. formal dress code) and students (i.e. casual dress code signifying a rebellious spirit of youth culture).
12 Nowadays, pupil views and pupil voices are buzz words in education contexts and they are driving many initiatives and policies, as well as the process of school development and evaluation (Flutter & Rudduck, 2004). This movement for the student voice to be heard and recognized is underpinned by a philosophical shift within the wider community to listen to the views of children initiated by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
13 Hellerup Skole, Copenhagen, Denmark is an exemplary case as far as adaptability is concerned. In this school a series of wooden central staircases double as seating and performance spaces (BCSE, 2006).
Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling… 25
Weight of objects High (difficult to be moved) Low (easy to be moved) Mobility of objects Low (bolted furniture, non-revolving
chairs, tables, etc, fixed surfaces, fixed Permanence of use Permanent use (e.g. permanent display
or writing surfaces)
Control of vision High (single focal spaces, features of high salience like size, sharpness of
Control of mobility High (orientation signs, reduced free space, long and narrow corridors, low and one applying the same inventory to another classroom characterized by strong framing.
Case study 4: Analyzing the material culture of a classroom characterized by strong framing
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Source: Personal archive.
Figure 8. A classroom characterized by strong framing.
The classroom presented in Figure 8 is characterized by strong framing. This evaluation is based on the following observations:
a) The criteria for the legitimate use of the classroom space are quite evident and explicit. Specifically, desks and chairs are ordered in an easily recognizable way, imposing certain seating arrangement of students‘ bodies. Furthermore, the thick wooden framework of the notice board at the back wall of the classroom circumscribes a well defined surface for the students to put their announcements or other texts echoing their voice.
b) The mobility allowed by the various material elements comprising classroom environment seems quite restricted. Desks which are the only visible pieces of furniture in this classroom seem quite heavy and are distributed with high density in space, thus not allowing easy reconfigurations of students‘ seating arrangements.
c) The classroom environment is characterized by high levels of uniformity, containing only identical desks, chairs and empty white walls (with the exception of the notice board). The climate of uniformity and austerity is further reinforced by the school uniform worn by all the students.
d) The material arrangements tend to also restrict significantly students‘ vision significantly. First of all, students‘ seating is arranged in such a way so the teacher becomes the focal point of their vision while at the same time preventing the eye-contact between the classmates.14 Secondly, the notice board has high salience due to its large size, colour contrast with the white surrounding wall and its central
14 It is worth noting at this point that despite the fact that the seating arrangement attempts to control students‘
vision as shown in the Figure, quite a significant number of them, especially those sitting at desks at the back of the classroom does not conform to this intended outcome. The conflict between the legitimate behavior imposed or invited by school materiality and the behavior of students in reality is an issue further up taken in the conclusion section.
Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling… 27 placement and thus it is highly likely to attract students‘ gaze. Finally, the closed shutters in the far left hand corner (just below air conditioning machine) do not allow students to have visual contact with the outside environment (only some attenuated sun rays are let into the classroom).
e) Similar high levels of control also exist as far as students‘ mobility is concerned. The classroom is overcrowded with desks so that there is littke space left for students to move around. In reality the narrow corridors formed between the rows of desks constitute the only space allowing students to freely move.
f) The material culture of this particular classroom does present significant differentiations implying differential social status between teachers and students.
Specifically, all the students are seated in similar desks, share a uniform school dress code, and are allocated an equal small amount of space. On the contrary the missing (but easily imagined in the front part of this classroom teacher) must at least have more space allocated to him/her and must be differentiated by his/her students by having a personal (not uniform) dress code.
Case study 5: Analyzing the material culture of a classroom characterized by weak framing
In sharp contrast with the classroom of the previous case study, the material culture of the
In sharp contrast with the classroom of the previous case study, the material culture of the