“But Aren't We Extinct?”: Inhabited Reform and Instructional Visibility in an Open Space School 40 Years Later

Abstract

Background/Context The 1960s open space school removed partitions between classrooms in part to alleviate teacher isolation. The model was long ago deemed a failure. Years later, teachers in surviving open space facilities continue to navigate the reform. Despite wide dismissal of the model, components of teachers’ work that open space schools sought to normalize (collaboration, informality, proximity) are increasingly valued for improving teachers’ professional communities. In addition “open” designs are resurfacing in new school models. Purpose/Research Questions Picking up where earlier scholars left off, this article elevates perspectives of teachers working in a surviving open space school today using a conceptual framework of situated cognition. In so doing, it seeks to extend literature on teacher collaboration and teachers’ social sense-making in implementation. The following research questions guide the study: 1) How do teachers in a surviving open space school make sense of the open space design and experience their work in it? 2) How does the increased visibility normalized by the open space design contribute to teachers’ professional collaboration and culture? How does this visibility shape teachers’ views of a new facility of self-contained classrooms? Setting Research took place at an open space public high school in an urban, majority-minority Northeastern school district which I call Hilltop High and Millview, respectively. Research Design/Data Collection This study employs the qualitative methodology of portraiture. I collected data through 1) semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers and 2) observations of participants’ classrooms/pods and teaching. Findings Findings illustrate a schooling environment in which teachers are impacted by one another's classrooms, prompting an array of coping strategies. While participants underscore frustrations with the design, they also highlight regular exchanges of teaching practices and professional camaraderie, both of which participants largely attribute to the instructional visibility normalized by open spaces. As a result, these teachers are decidedly conflicted about their district's plans for a new facility of self-contained classrooms. Conclusions/Recommendations This research complicates the popular narrative of teachers as impediments to school reform, as Hilltop teachers remain notably sympathetic to open space despite its challenges. The work additionally extends literature on situated cognition as it relates to teachers’ implementation of policy, highlighting the impact of social context on individual teachers’ sense-making. Further, to capture the uniqueness of participants’ situation, occupying past reformers’ ideas, I advance a theory of inhabited reform to describe teachers’ ongoing, evolving negotiation of particularly durable reforms. While these findings do not encourage a renewal of open space schools, they do suggest that schools offer teachers regular time and space for informal collaboration and interaction in addition to more formalized approaches.