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ClassroomsClassrooms were not as present in student videos as anticipated based on pilot data, nevertheless an analysis of classrooms are central in efforts to understand and improve schools. Little research was found that investigated the meaning of places within classrooms or their material environments more generally, though clearly, early childhood educators have focused on classroom arrangements. Little of this research is relevant to high schools, however, because the diversity of places in early childhood classrooms are rarely found in secondary schools. Instead, this diversity is spread out throughout the school, different classrooms having distinct structures and equipment. This difference tends to shift the control from teachers to administrators. The focal video from Urban High (Project 7) contained three shots in classrooms, and the group, while playing at the end of the term, recorded an additional seven shots in a classroom. There was one relatively lengthy shot (73.73 seconds, the longest shot in the sequence of interviews that averaged 29.89 seconds) that conformed to a general pattern observed in pilot data. The shot (Segment 86 out of a total of 203 segments across the three focal projects) will be discussed throughout the chapter. It involved eight events and four “interviews” consisting of one to two questions. The classroom in which it was recorded was not observed apart from this segment, nevertheless typical activities and the relationships of its occupants can be detected. Classrooms are most clearly divided into places by the furniture that creates areas where movement is and is not possible. The furniture is clearly divided by that which is occupied by teachers and that which is occupied by students, though student access to teacher places varies with the classroom. Segment 86 was shot in a classroom that was filled with furniture, limiting movement, and has indications of being a room where teacher-owned places and student-owned places are highly defined. An important difference between this project and others considered in this research is that it involved a camera operator and an interviewer working in cooperation. Nevertheless, like many shots in the pilot data, the students borrowed the teacher-owned places in the front of the classroom—with all the student desks turned toward them—as the interviewer used the freedom that comes with “being” the teacher to move around the room. The boundary between the teacher-owned and student-owned places were porous and crossable, but other students were bound to their desks. A clear limit on the group’s use of the teacher’s area was visible when the camera turned to show the teacher sitting at the very front, facing the classroom. The camera operator occupied the spot between the teacher and the student desks and remained there throughout the segment. The interviewer (Skinny) stood between the teacher’s desk and the student desks at the beginning, moving into the student area twice and then toward the teacher. Skinny was the only one to move, acting as an arm of the camera as he designated who could speak by pointing the prop microphone toward them. By following the direction of the camera and the location of both it and the subject, the negotiation of power and solidarity are visible. Refer to Illustration 8. The camera and interviewer demonstrate solidarity as they share the same powerful but ambiguous place that is part of the teacher-owned place but on its periphery. Skinny stands sandwiched in the space between the teacher's desk and the student desks, and both interviewer and camera are within the same semi-bounded area. Skinny then moves among the students, carrying the power of the camera and his previous location with him but demonstrating solidarity by sharing his power to speak with him. Skinny emerges from the student desks to bring the camera to the teacher, who is sitting but still dominates by facing the class, able to monitor all the interviews. The teacher shows solidarity with the students and shares her power by also not occupying the center of the teacher-owned place. She grasps the microphone Skinny holds out to her to confirm her position but Skinny has the power of height. Thus each of the positions and movements relate a constant negotiation of their relations. This classroom was special, however. The students did not utilize the power of location in any other classroom. In other interviews, they once were on the periphery of a classroom, and another time, they stood near the door and recorded into the back of the student desks. Their off-task shots were taken in a chemistry classroom always from a student position, sitting at a table. Only once from this data was a teacher's position—the place of power in a classroom—occupied. Not all classrooms have such a clearly distinguished place of power, but all the other segments that included a classroom were clearly not in such a position and most were found to be on the borders of whatever places they approached. (Some of these will be discussed with the general discussion of the projects at the end of the chapter.) The students who were studied, unlike one student in particular from the pilot study, demonstrated no intention to use the structure of a classroom to influence activities except in this one segment. In every other segment of the focal projects, places were less permanently defined and more student-owned. |
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