Studiero mellan kropp och rum. En mixed-methods interventionsstudie av möbleringens påverkan på studiero i fyra mellanstadieskolor.

Abstract

During the last 10 years, Swedish school policy has proclaimed the role of studiero in the classroom as a key factor to improve declining school results. This Swedish word is used to describe both a quiet and orderly classroom environment, certain cognitive states in learners and forms of teacher leadership – all of which are necessary for a learning environment. This study is looking closely at the affordances of the classroom and their possible effects on the cognitive aspects of “studiero”, by using an enactivist lens that connects our mind to our bodies and the surrounding physical world. The study employed a mixed-methods quasi-experimental design involving 201 fifth-grade students and eleven teachers, divided into test and control groups. Through an 8-month intervention a multimodal furniture arrangement was evaluated quantitatively with questionnaires to students and qualitatively through interviews with teachers. The analysis has paid special attention to the relation between the affordances of the room, and students’ and teachers’ experiences of attention and engagement materialized through bodily expression. The results showed that a multimodal classroom increased both learner and teacher movements during class. It was also shown that the experience of noise decreased in the new setting. Thirdly, variation in teaching modalities was not affected by an increase in seating modalities. And finally, when students had a smorgasbord of available affordances in the classroom, they favored secluded alone-seats to collaborative common spaces. The overall interpretation is that the main affordance of the multimodal classroom is freedom of agency. This may be experienced both as positive and negative in terms of “studiero” – negative when interpreted as “quiet and orderly”, but positive when interpreted as “learner engagement and on-task behavior”. Studiero may therefore be understood as a bodily enactment through the interaction between the affordances of the room and demands of the task.