Education Week - January 22, 2020 - 18

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a believer in the idea that he's spent
up to $12,000 a year for the past five
years helping three to four teachers
annually remake their classrooms. He
even conducted his doctoral dissertation research on the topic.
But other educators say the approach has led to classroom-management disasters. And some experts are
skeptical that the approach is backed
up by any meaningful research.
Changes to a physical environment
could have an impact on students
and teachers, said Dan Willingham,
a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. But it's really hard
to document just how much of an effect it has on student achievement or
even on things like collaboration and
communication, he added. That's
because there are so many factors
that are likely to be more important,
including the educator and his or her
teaching style.
His advice to districts: Don't shell
out tens of thousands of dollars to consultants who say they can help change
learning environments, which, in
turn, will improve achievement.

Upsides and Downsides
Andy Calkins, the director of Next
Generation Learning Challenges,
which offers districts competitive
grants to revamp their schools, had a
similar take.
"Is there solid research that shows
a direct link between different kinds
of classroom setups and test scores,"
Calkins asked. "There might be, but
I couldn't name one for you." Instead,
he said, the new types of design may
be more likely to affect factors beyond
traditional academics, such as student
engagement.
That's been the case for Tina Marchiano, an English teacher at Pascack
Valley High School. She was among
the first to take the district up on its
opportunity to redo her classroom, replacing traditional desks with café tables that have white boards on top, so
students can write on them. She added
a couch and about 10 big, plush rolling
chairs, perfect for curling up with a
book. And she ditched her own desk,
so that she could be "more of a woman
of the people," circulating throughout
the room during lessons, she said.
She's been teaching in this new environment for about four years. And
while she can't say for sure if it's had
an impact on student achievement,
it's definitely added to a sense of classroom community.
"Kids come in and feel a sense of
comfort and belonging in there,"
she said. "They own the room a little bit more because it is something
different."
The biggest downside: The close
quarters may be great for collabora-

tion and classwork, but they are less
optimal when it's time to take a big,
summative assessment. Marchiano
said she reserves the library on test
day, so her students aren't tempted to
peek at their neighbor's paper.
Another hiccup: It can get complicated-and expensive-to get replacement parts for this specially-selected
classroom furniture. It's also been a
challenge for teachers who may have
to share a classroom. What works
for one might not work for the other,
Gundersen, the superintendent, said.
But Gundersen is convinced that
those struggles are worth it.
In fact, for his dissertation,
he explored the question of
whether this type of arrangement helped bolster what he
calls the four Cs: collaboration, communication, critical
thinking, and creativity.
What he found, after interviewing more than a dozen
teachers in a suburban district outside New York City
that also employs the flexible seating: The different arrangement did indeed seem
to have a positive impact on
communication and collaboration. But improvements to
critical thinking and creativity need to be accompanied
by bigger changes to curriculum and
instruction.

'Fun Environments'
Teachers of younger students are
also exploring the strategy.
Michael Dunlea, who teaches a 3rd
grade inclusion class in southern New
Jersey's Tabernacle Township school
district, let his students design their
own classroom last year. He brought
in some special furniture-a rocking
chair, bean bag chairs, and a couch-
and let his students vote on what went
where. The district provided a rug.
"My goal is to get the kids to love
coming into the room," he said. "The
more you make it look like a fun environment to be, the easier it is to get
them to come and be ready to learn
and be less stressed because they
are coming in the door with so much
stress and anxiety."
The St. Vrain Valley district, not
far from Boulder, Colo., took a more
formal approach: It offered teachers
a course in what the district terms
"neurologically sound practices and
research," including sensory integration and universal design for learning,
which entails creating lessons and
classroom materials that are flexible
enough to accommodate different
learning styles. The main purpose of
the experience was to help educators
rethink their use of space.
"Some kids like to stand, some kids
like to sit on the floor, and giving up
that control is hard sometimes for

18 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 22, 2020 | www.edweek.org

Photos by Ryan Collerd for Education Week

Flexible Seating in K-12
Attempting to Mirror
Work Environments

FROM TOP: Students in
teacher Matt Morone's English
2 class at Pascack Valley
Regional High School in New
Jersey sit in varied types of
furniture, from group desks to
cushioned chairs and a booth
one might find in a café or
restaurant.
Left to right, Delia Stiles, 16,
Madeline Campbell, 17, and
Jodi Siegel, 16, sit in language
and composition class at
Pascack Valley Regional High.

teachers," said Emily Scott, the district's special education coordinator,
who has a deep background in occupational therapy and led the course.
"You have 30 positions [for students
in a classroom], you don't necessarily
have 30 seats." Last school year, the
district was able to find money in the
budget-about $8,000 to $10,000-
to help each participating teacher buy
new furniture, including café tables,
tall tables, and floor cushions. (A second cohort this year determined its
classroom needs and then developed
plans based on them.)
That inspired an 'HGTV'-like redesign blitz, with teachers transforming
their rooms to get rid of unused bookshelves and simplify what was on the
walls. Before that, in some elementary classrooms, "it was very difficult
to know what to pay attention to or to
keep attention on any given task, given
the visual noise that was present," said
Zac Chase, St. Vrain Valley's secondary
language arts curriculum coordinator.
Teachers made sure there was a
quiet space in their classrooms, where
students could relax, an atmosphere
that is particularly important for children who may be anxious or are experiencing trauma at home, Chase said.
At this point, the district doesn't
have data to show that the changes
have had an impact on student
achievement because the overhaul
is too new. But there's anecdotal
evidence that some students, and
teachers, are more engaged in class,
Scott said.

The approach doesn't work for
everyone.
Kayse Morris, a former 8th grade
teacher who recently left the classroom to serve as a consultant and
coach, was inspired by Instagram to
try flexible seating. But it didn't work
out the way she had hoped.
She spent more than $500 of her
own money on recliners, a couch,
a few rocking chairs, a coffee table,
bean bag chairs, and a rug. "I'll be
honest, I did it because the Instagram
world made me feel like it was going
to make me a better teacher," said
Morris, who at the time taught language arts at Coffee Middle School
in Douglas, Ga.
The students took to the new furniture right away. "I was the coolest
teacher on the hallway right out the
gate," she said.
But that actually turned out to be a
bad thing. Students used the looser
structure to cheat. Some fell asleep
on the couch during class. Students
in special education who joined the
class through inclusion had trouble
adjusting to the lack of routine.
And then, the day before the
Christmas holiday break started,
a student stepped through the coffee table. "That was the last straw,"
Morris said. She and her husband
spent the break getting rid of the
comfy seating and putting the desks
in her classroom back into traditional rows.
"The rest of the year was fantastic,"
she said.

Some experts say educators trying
this new approach should expect it to
be a bumpy ride at first.
Generally, it can take roughly six
months for teachers to get comfortable
with new types of learning spaces,
said Wesley Imms, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne
Graduate School of Education in Australia. Imms has studied the impact
of innovative classroom design on
schools across Australia, which has
experimented more in recent years
with new types of learning spaces than
schools in the United States.
Imms' survey of 1,500 Australian
educators has found that new types
of learning spaces-which Down
Under can mean everything from
f lexible walls to classrooms with
outdoor seating, not just changes
in furniture-can help students become more creative and collaborative. There is also emerging, but still
limited research, that the new kinds
of spaces boost outcomes in reading
and math, he said.
But just making changes to a space
isn't enough.
"These spaces by themselves don't
necessarily guarantee a different type of
teaching, a different type of learning. It
has to come from an educational vision,"
Imms said. "But we can't expect the
space to do all the work. Because it won't.
You can put a teacher in a brand-new innovative space, and that teacher may
teach the way they've always taught, and
therefore, the kids will probably learn
much the way they've always learned."

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Education Week - January 22, 2020

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