There is much written about reducing extraneous cognitive load. A quick google will reveal hundreds of posts, articles and research papers exploring the need to keep distraction and distracting environments to a minimum. Everything from seating to wall displays to lettering and layout is presented as a potential way to reduce split attention, distraction or extraneous load.
This bothers me.
Reducing extraneous load obviously doesn’t bother me. Harnessing the finite and slippery resource that is attention obviously doesn’t bother me. Reducing unnecessary gifs and memes and in your face posters also doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the conflation of less is always more.
In the rush to reduce distraction there is the potential for multiple lethal mutations. On my travels around the country in hundreds of classroom settings I have seen first a gradual erosion and more recently an at-pace environment change from bright and busy classrooms to “fifty shades of beige”.
I would never argue that arranging a classroom to resemble a theme park or a maximalist festival of multi coloured backing paper is the right thing to do, but neither would I advocate for a spartan and relatively empty classroom, devoid of stimulation and fixed in layout for all lessons every day for all children. I have genuinely visited EYFS settings that have fixed tables and chairs in forward facing rows, and KS1 classrooms that have no displays and fixed seating.
What we need is a sensitive analysis of function, purpose and intentionality.
What and who our environment is used by and for should dictate our decision-making processes about its layout and environment. In the Extended Mind in Action there are specific sections regarding the effective use of working walls and the usefulness of these and other larger scale external memory fields. It is also important to ensure that our classrooms enable age and stage appropriate pedagogy. Continuous or enhanced provision or associated play based pedagogy will require a totally different layout to that of a more formal instruction classroom for older or secondary age students.
What and who our classroom is predominantly used for should define and dictate its layout, not a single one size fits all approach for all subjects, ages, stages and tasks.
In a secondary setting, there are specialist classrooms or areas for changing for PE, teaching Art, Cooking, Science etc. In a primary classroom, the classroom has to function as Art studio, science lab, DT workbench and often PE changing room. This multi-functional use of space means that layout needs to be flexible, adaptable and lends itself to developing the knowledge, skills and understanding of the individual subject disciplines.
Alongside the subject specific curriculum there is the hidden curriculum and the need to develop age appropriate social and oracy skills. Seating arrangements and layouts need to be such that they allow for a wide range of individual, paired, small and larger group work to develop these in both planned and incidental interactions. In my experience a very fixed seating arrangement which is difficult to adapt, when applied across the primary curriculum in a classroom narrows task design which leads to the reduction of opportunities for developing a deep and varied experience and understanding of the curriculum.
Some of this change may be due in part to a Covid hangover. Talking to hundreds of teachers and heads in my SIP work has revealed that there has been a degree of unexplained collective professional amnesia about what is and was possible pre covid. There are hangover elements such as fixed seating, lots of teaching in rows for all year groups, and a reluctance to integrate interactions between children as this was impossible to do or severely impacted during covid restrictions. This obviously also impacted on children too who may have missed out on these early experiences and are not as skilled in them as their predecessors, so it looks as if they react better to or prefer a certain default way with which they are familiar.
However, I am not anti seating in rows. I am pro understanding why we make the choices we make for each age group, subject and task. I am pro clear and informed rationale. For some aspects of the curriculum, rows are efficient and make sense. For others, they can dictate lesson structure and task design and inadvertently clip the wings of a wider range of effective pedagogical approaches.
This is similar to what I have also seen in the reduction of teaching with younger children on the carpet. With my own classes and with many schools with whom I work, children are taught on the carpet up to and including year 6. This not only provides them with the opportunity to sit and develop physical strength and flexibility in different muscle groups to those required for sitting at a chair, but also gives me a direct and close up view of what they may be writing about on whiteboards and what they may be talking about in paired or shared talk. The erosion of carpet based teaching in primary is widespread and when questioned, many teachers I speak to say they don’t know why they stopped doing it, or that they are “not allowed” or that they would absolutely love to reinstate it but didn’t think it was “fashionable” any more. Many seasoned primary teachers will tell you that carpet teaching not only provides a sense of togetherness, but it provides a much-needed attentional reset when children get up, stretch their legs and transition back to their desks to complete any independent work. The loss or erosion of this teaching area is one thing I always encourage colleagues to reconsider, not least because 50% of a child’s day is now spent sitting, more by adolescence and so every different type of movement we can incorporate into our days, however small, is helpful for physical development and health.
Carpet teaching also serves to reduce distraction. There is less to “see” as children are already at the front of the room, and any turned heads are easy to spot. Distraction can be reduced even more by sectioning or defining the carpet area with low furniture such as bookshelves turned outwards or storage. This provides a defined area within which children can pay attention but provides clear view over the rest of the class for the teacher if any small groups are working elsewhere. The eye-to-eye contingent communication which is a key element of effective instruction is also much easier on the carpet, as is the tracking of the teacher’s eyes and hand which are innate yet essential aspects of following any modelling or instruction. Young humans when learning are hard wired to follow the hand and gaze of the “instructor”. It is much easier to do this close up than from the back of the room.
Teaching from the carpet also allows for flexibility in groupings or pairings much more quickly as there is no furniture involved. Children therefore become more used to switching pairs or groups as it is not as overt as standing up and moving from one side of a room to another. It also provides the opportunity to sit specific children very close to you who may require additional support or monitoring. This is then easier to provide and often less obvious or intrusive than navigating this when they are seated throughout at desks.
Alongside the reduction in distraction and the associated orienting of attention that carpet teaching can provide, it also means that the remaining class seating can be more flexible in layout and structure. This is because the “teaching” part where you want full attention takes place on the carpet. For those classrooms in which I’ve taught or supported where there is relatively little carpet space, I always create one with a small cluster or row of tables directly behind it, so the class is split between carpet and these clusters of tables but are all at the front with me. This also helps with modelling detailed concepts and for ensuring all children can see and hear instruction.
Very often I support schools and when I sit in every seat in the classroom, many provide an obscured or tiny view of the board or have glare or dazzle from windows. Carpet teaching can prevent this from happening, but I would always encourage every teacher to sit in every seat in their classroom and look at the board on a very sunny day, especially in seasons where the sun appears lower in the sky. I have lost count of the number of children I have sat next to, realised you can’t see the board properly from where they’re sitting then been told “no” when I ask if they’ve ever told an adult they can’t actually see the board. If we are all about harnessing attention and reducing distraction, then ensuring children can see the board and it is not obscured by the sun need to feature in our approaches. If you’re seated in the row that is by the heater, dazzled by a sun a few months of the year, and obscured slightly by the curve of the visualiser then you’re already on the back foot.
This leads nicely into what children may or may not be distracted by in their classrooms. Some schools have strict rules about what should or shouldn’t be displayed in classrooms. I have seen classrooms where I was genuinely surprised the room was in use as a classroom so spartan was its appearance, and others which were a migraine waiting to happen and were a relative festival of sensory overload where navigating acres of dangling chiffon, rattan hoops and multi coloured jaunty or giant installations and displays meant that I simply couldn’t focus on a thing that was going on. Neither one of those extremes are necessarily right but neither is there a single “right way” to arrange a classroom. This is due in part to the available space and layout; if you have an awkward shaped classroom, a classroom with seven separate doors (that is the record on my travels), only one plug socket or fixed floor coverings such as defined wet and dry areas then you will already have some of the decision making done for you. This is again why a one size fits all is a nonsense. Have you ever tried fitting all rows into an L shaped classroom with 5 doors in it? Equally it may be that you have areas of your classroom that are excessively hot or require access for specialist equipment or are simply too sunny or too dark to use for specific aspects of the day. What we need to do in these situations is to think, “What do I want children to look at and when?”
When you are teaching, or children are receiving small group instruction it makes sense for these areas to be low in display and distraction. If children are at their places working, you want them to be able to easily see and access resources to support their learning. What you don’t want is to be trying to teach fractions in front of a giant twinkly display of rainbow fish artwork.
So, what do you do with the Artwork or the beautiful Geography work?
You display it. You celebrate it. You just don’t put it in front of your board in the same way you wouldn’t wallpaper the wall behind your TV at home with highly decorative wallpaper and multiple knick knacks. If a class has worked hard to produce beautiful work, then it should be displayed or celebrated. This is why the “no display” approach in my mind is wrong. You just don’t display it where you want the children to be thinking hard whilst paying attention.
What we often overlook is that the classroom itself is not just a potential distraction for pupils (and it’s still a distraction if it jam packed full of stuff but that stuff just happens to be hessian and muted colours), it is a learning resource. How we arrange our seating, our workspaces, our resources, prompts, visuals and celebrations of work provide not only scaffolds and supports but celebrations for our class’ efforts. For primary pupils too this is where they spend the bulk of their waking hours during the working week. It is linked to their class or year group’s identity and the early messaging around the value of their endeavours. I often ask teachers to consider, If I was seven, would I want to sit in this chair and this chair only for every lesson all week? What would my experience be like? What might I think and feel? How might this help my thinking and development?
We know so much about what helps in terms of attention and distraction, but we have potentially been distracted by this and forgotten that the room itself is a key part of our pedagogical decision making. Where we teach the what we teach, and the how we teach the what we teach are important factors in ensuring that learning happens and that we don’t lose sight of the user end experience for our children of our associated decision making.
Thinking Flexibly 