How do Teachers Use Open Learning Spaces? Mapping from Teachers’ Socio-spatial Data to Spatial Pedagogy

Abstract

Teacher’s in-class positioning and interaction patterns (termed spatial pedagogy) are an essential part of their classroom management and orchestration strategies that can substantially impact students’ learning. Yet, effective management of teachers’ spatial pedagogy can become increasingly challenging as novel architectural designs, such as open learning spaces, aim to disrupt teaching conventions by promoting flexible pedagogical approaches and maximising student connectedness. Multimodal learning analytics and indoor positioning technologies may hold promises to support teachers in complex learning spaces by making salient aspects of their spatial pedagogy visible for provoking reflection. This paper explores how granular x-y positioning data can be modelled into socio-spatial metrics that can contain insights about teachers’ spatial pedagogy across various learning designs. A total of approximately 172.63 million position data points were collected during 101 classes over eight weeks. The results illustrate how indoor positioning analytics can help generate a deeper understanding of how teachers use their learning spaces, such as their 1) teaching responsibilities; 2) proactive or passive interactions with students; and 3) supervisory, interactional, collaborative, and authoritative teaching approaches. Implications of the current findings to future learning analytics research and educational practices were also discussed.