Learning environments affect everyone. Intentional long-term progress in learning environment design is often the result of whole school or whole setting approaches. We help whole teams of staff and co-collaborators (including the children) reflect together, blending their skills, experience and needs to create learning spaces that work for them.
Schools are an important setting for children’s holistic growth and cognitive development and also the place where teaching staff, support staff, families, those involved in governance and visitors spend a great deal of their time. All of us operate at our best when the environment we are in caters for our needs.
Relevant and lasting improvements only take place when there is a consensus amongst the users of a space regarding what could happen there. Just as schools and settings have ambitious mission statements, there needs to be an ambitious collective vision and awareness of how this is going to be realised, who is going to do what and why and how this might be managed as seamlessly as possible with the greatest positive impact. This is where a whole school or whole setting approach is most useful; working with teams enabling them to hear Elizabeth’s key messages as a whole group in a professional development approach.
Inviting Elizabeth along to your school or setting to work with the people who use that space is the most impactful and empowering staff development intervention. She has never been an advocate of ‘light touch short lived’ initiatives that die out once key staff have moved on or fail to enthuse and inform colleagues. All of the interdependent and interconnected components that make up a whole school and its systems need to collectively adopt new ways of working using approaches that integrate everyone. Creating supportive environments for optimal learning are most successful when team based.
Using highly visual and interactive whole school or whole setting development programmes, Elizabeth can work with you on a long-term basis to ignite, support and sustain improvement in children’s engagement in their learning, embedding knowledge and professional confidence aligned to academic targets. An initial environment audit typically starts this process, providing a baseline and capturing what’s working well and what might be helpful to consider more deeply.
This approach can also be relevant for multi-sited teams, teams across subject areas, ages and stages, new team induction, multi-functional teams, specialists, established teams, new builds, refurbishments and so on.
To follow: link to case studies of whole school approaches (currently collating)
If your school or setting is ready for some strategic direction regarding your learning environments, contact us to explore options.