Emily Nelson

Innovative learning environments and new materialism: A conjunctural analysis of pedagogic spaces

Abstract An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development research priority, innovative learning environments (ILEs) have been translated into policy and practice in 25 countries around the world. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, learning spaces are being reconceptualised in relation to this policy work by school leaders who are confronted by an impetus to lead pedagogic change. The article contributes a conjunctural analysis of the milieu around the redesign of these education facilities. Recognising that bodies and objects entwine in pedagogic spaces, we contribute a new materialism reading of ILEs as these are instantiated in New Zealand. New materialism recognises the agential nature of matter and questions the anthropocentric narrative that frames the post-enlightenment conception of what it means to be human. The decentring of human subjects through a materialist ontology facilitates a consideration of the power of objects to affect the spatial politics of learning environments. The article traces a relationship between the New Zealand strategic plan for Education 2015–2021 and principal conceptions of ILE as the lived spaces of this policy actualisation and the disciplinary/control society conjuncture. Informed by theories of spatial practice, we argue that principals’ understandings of ‘space’ are integral to pedagogic approaches within open-plan spaces. A conjunctural analysis can expand the capacity to act politically. By examining the complex conditions of a political intervention, in this case ILEs, we trace the displacements and condensations of different sorts of contradictions, and thus open up possibilities for action.

Re-thinking power in student voice as games of truth: dealing/playing your hand

Abstract Theorising power in student voice is contested terrain dominated by critical theory but challenged increasingly by post-structural approaches. Although critical approaches have suited the advocacy needed to establish student voice as worthy social justice work in this article I explore post-structural resources that more generatively account for the complexity, multiplicity and ambiguity of power dynamics within student voice initiatives. I examine what is opened up when power is conceptualised as ‘games of truth’, multifarious, generative and deployed tactically by both students and researchers to co-produce ‘truths’ that emerge as student voice. I ‘plug in’ games of truth to data from one student voice encounter, researcher reflections and participatory research discourses to generate an assemblage of power dynamics in student voice differently. I argue that viewing power as games of truth opens up to student voice as contingent and recursive tactical contests over truth played between mutually powerful, yet differently powered players.

‘It’s Cool, People Your Same Age Being in Charge of You’

Contemporary orientations to student voice emphasise the importance of partnership between students and teachers and between students themselves. This chapter presents a class action research project where students and teachers worked together within a governance partnership structure to maximise student influence within classroom pedagogy and curriculum design. The classroom example highlights both the value and the complexity of enacting student voice as partnership and the importance of attending to student capacity to lead as well as ongoing reflexive critique of identities, pedagogical strategies and notions of power as core aspects of such work.