COMUNICACIN CONGRESO ECER 2014

Case Study in an Abalar Classroom (Galicia, Spain). The Spatial Dimension in the One
Laptop per Child Model.




There has recently been a big development and progress in the technological field, and this has
affected all the vital spheres. Because of that, Education becomes a fundamental pillar to
develop digital competences, which allow children become active and participative citizens in
the modern society. Due to the technological imperative, which dominates the digital era, a big
amount of proposals and politics have appeared to regulate the digital technologies used in
education. In this sense, many countries have incorporated educational politics based on One
Laptop per Child Model. This is the case of Spain, which in its 2006 Organic Law of Education
(LOU) established, for the first time, the so-called Handling Information and Digital
Competence. In 2009, the State promoted the program Plan Escuela 2.0, whose aim is
implementing the 21st Century and digital classrooms with technological infrastructure and
connectivity. The Autonomous Community of Galicia took this program, which is set it in the
Abalar Project. So, a big amount of classrooms of different Galician schools are
technologically immerse in the One Laptop per Child Model.
Beyond the operational and administrative analysis, that are also necessary, the situation of the
laptops into the classrooms needs a reflection about the reality in each school and a contextual
analysis (Casablancas, 2014).
With the aim to understand and describe the organizational classroom transformations that
happen (or not), with the incorporation of the digital technologies in schools, to develop the
digital competence, we wonder: what happens in our schools?
In this paper, we concretely focus on the organizational changes required by the incorporation
of digital technologies in the curriculum and classrooms. These changes are based on the
evidence that the new educational scene is distinguished for having in each classroom the
technological devices (mini laptops, DIB digital interactive board-, wireless internet access);
instead of moving to a specific and shared classroom (the computer lab) as it used to be before
the Abalar Project.
Escolano (2000: 183) remembers us that spatial and temporal dimensions, as essential issues
in the scholar culture, are not simply abstract diagrams or <neutral> structures in which the
scholar action is <empty>. The scholar space is not only a <container>, where the institutional
education is placed, that is to say, a scene designed from exclusive and formal premises, in
which the agents that act in teaching-learning process are <situated> to execute a determinate
assortment of actions.

The classroom's space is by itself a discourse stablished in its materiality, organization,
discipline, social control, symbols, representations and value system.
The schooll scene is an invisible part of the curriculum. It is invisible because it is constituted as
part of schooll shapes, they have always been there, as a common and natural experience that
becomes familiar. Its power is neither discussed nor considered, making it paradoxically more
powerful (Chartier, 2002).
In this space, historically constructed, the difficulty resides in incorporating the digital
technologies, new devices for the school; and consequently, unknown devices for existing and
familiar educational practices

The way in which the materials are organized in the classroom (desks, blackboard, tables)
give different and specific places to the teacher and pupils, and it determines the social
relations among them (Naranjo, 2011). That is why analyzing the space of the classroom
suggests approaching pupils and teachers, as active meaning producers, that contribute to the
classroom space construction, as a social space.


Methods/methodology (up to 400 words)
A qualitative methodology is proposed based in cases study with an ethnographic approach.
Case study is used to bring towards the problem, because it is considered a suitable method to
understand the existing dynamics and speeches in a singular context (Yin, 2003). The
ethnographical approach in education with participant observation, based on taking part in the
peoples daily life during a period of time, observing what happens, listening to what it is said,
making questions and seeking all kind of data (Hammserley & Atkinson, 2005), allows
rebuilding the daily interaction processes related with the space (classroom).

The case study was the fifth course of one Galician primary school. The classroom had 15
pupils, 5 girls and 10 boys, aged between 10 and 12 years old. It was the first time they worked
in the classroom with personal computers (laptops). The teacher, active from 1993, did not have
any previous experience in this new modality of technologies integration in the school.

The corpus of the data was by a field diary. 34-day observations, 5 sessions each one, have
been thoroughly registered.13 class days have been registered in video and audio. 3 interviews
(the teacher, the ITC school coordinator, and the headteacher), and 2 focus groups (with 6
pupils each) have also been realized. They have firstly been registered in audio and then
transcribed.

Expected outcomes/results (up to 300 words)

The teacher constantly rethought the spatial design of the classroom, principally about the
pupils distribution, because the furniture and other objects (closet, IDB, blackboard, corkboard)
were beforehand placed, and they could not be modified. The observations manifest the
teachers preoccupation about her own practice in the reflection about spatial aspects to
improve the learning processes.

The classroom design is not ingenuous, but it fixes a social meaning which is thoroughly and
navely shared, to be understood as a natural one (Naranjo, 2011). The design of the studied
classroom, as it happens in other classrooms of the same school and of other schools, presents
a delimited space for the academic work, a space in which the school works are done,
specifically for teaching and learning. But the designed scene to work the curricular content
allows the entry to other environments. Since through the window of the classroom the people
passing by and the village people can be observed and that reveals openness to the outside
space and visibility. Several events leave tracks of this attitude, which allows the halt of
academic work to contemplate the reality, without considering it a distraction, but an opportunity
to open them to the community. Equally, there are moments in which the academic work
transcends the physical limits of the classroom. The observations reveal that the materiality of
the classroom, as a physical and closed space, does not hamper that the teachers attitude
opens the classroom doors to other non formal curricular learning experiences.
Nevertheless, tensions between the imposed meanings by the historical construction of the
scholar space, now routinized, and the particularities of the new devices, the digital
technologies and the interaction of the actors with these, have been observed in the
incorporation of the classroom design. The closet location (with the pupils laptops), behind the
teachers table, determines its access, under the surveillance of the teachers authority.
The spatial distribution of the scene portrays a pedagogical teacher-centered model, as a result
of both the own tradition of the materiality of the classroom and the teachers decisions. The
communication is mainly established from the teacher to the pupils to transmit information
(Naranjo, 2011). In the use of technologies, a pattern of teacher-centered model is maintained,
communicating to the pupils the guidelines of her central position.

References:
Casablancas, S. (2014). The matter of teacher training in 1-1 model: The case of Innovative
schools, Connecting equality programme, Argentina. Revista Educar, vol. 50 (1), 103-120.
Chartier, A. M. (2002). Um Dispositivo sem Autor. Cadernos e fichrios na escola primria.
Revista brasileira de histria da educao, 3, 9-25.
Yin R. K. (2003). Case study research: design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Escolano, A. (2000). Tiempos y espacios para La escuela. Ensayos histricos. Madrid:
Biblioteca Nueva.
Hammersley, M. y Atkinson P. (2005). Etnografa. Mtodos de investigacin. Barcelona,
Paids.
Naranjo, G. (2011). La construccin social y local del espacio ulico en un grupo de escuela
primaria. CPU-e, Revista de Investigacin Educativa, 12, 2-27.