CLASSROOMS AS WORKING ENVIRONMENTS

The students were in the same rooms throughout their two year course and for the media students the sessions were three hours long, with two sessions on a Friday. The music students had both two and three hour sessions. There were mid-session breaks and also a one hour lunch break for those at college all day. The activities during these periods were quite typical for students who were expected to work more independently. For example, a tutor occasionally presented a topic to all the students, especially at the start of a new unit, or to recap on some elements of the unit. There were the very occasional group activities but predominantly the students worked at their computers and focused on attaining the evidence needed for their coursework. The media students produced both academic text based evidencing and also visual work using Adobe Creative Suite, in particular Photoshop for graphics editing and generation and occasionally Dreamweaver for the design and development of websites. The music students primarily used the computers for Internet sourced resources and researching for information on the Internet, together with Microsoft Word for text based tasks. The only creative software they very occasionally used was Sibelius music

composition and notation software. They did use Cubase, which was more appropriate software for audio editing but only in the music studios.

What this synopsis of student activities indicates, is that the students were sat down for most, if not all, of the time in the sessions and their attention was predominantly directed towards the computer screen. The seats were on castors and were height and back adjustable, so there was some

adjustment for comfort, and the computer screen and keyboards were on fixed worktops fastened to the wall. Notably there were hot water pipes running along the bottoms of the walls and these radiated heat underneath the worktops where the students had their legs; they were out of immediate reach but they were non-insulated. If, the room was not a conducive environment for learning for the duration of these activities, then the environment itself and how it was perceived was one potential factor in how students’ approached their coursework. As Low (2003: 10) suggests, a person’s perception and experience of a space modifies relative to their emotions and state of mind, and other factors. At this stage of the analysis it is the factor of the comfort of the environment, which will be discussed.

To set the question of the comfort of the environment into context, at the early stages of the research the predominant focus was directed to the main research question with very little ethnographic attention, at that time, to the classroom itself. They were merely spaces to work in and it was the activities within them that were my focus. In my tutor role I was aware that

sometimes the air conditioning in classrooms needed adjusting with the remote control, or if there was a window, it was opened to let in some fresh air. The students had never voiced any significant concerns, apart from occasionally asking for the temperature to be adjusted up, or down.

However, I had not previously worked in any of the classrooms where the observations were conducted and when the observations first started in the September it was a warm month. As indicated in Section 4.2.5, it was noticeable how warm all three classrooms could become, particularly the media room, which was the smallest of all the three rooms. The air conditioning unit was small and it appeared to be quite ineffective at controlling the temperature of the whole room, as it only seemed to be the area near the unit that was cooled down. One music room was larger but it only had one small air conditioning unit on a wall and one small window that could be partially opened at the top. The second music classroom had no fixed units and when it was warm portable units needed to be brought in, but again it was only the areas near to them where they

seemed to be effective in reducing the temperature. It did have windows at one end of the room though and these could be opened.

From my PGCE teacher training and a previous management course I was aware of Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs, especially the fundamental physiological needs and if these are not met then an individual may struggle to progress to the next levels. There are a range of factors that can contribute to a deficit in needs, but I never considered the environmental conditions of a modern classroom to be within this category. Extremes of temperature can deprive a body of its

physiological needs and if it is too warm then thirst and fatigue, and so on can result. Air

deprivation, or its quality can also be a factor. In his model Maslow refers to homeostasis and the need for the body to maintain a stable inner environment and the conditions of the immediate microenvironment can be an obvious factor in this.

On some of the warmer days I had noticed that when I was in the classrooms there was a layer of sweat on my face and I soon became aware how much my choice of dress for the day was

determined by the conditions of these rooms. For most of the sessions I was sat down in various locations in the rooms and intermittently I walked around observing what the students were doing and monitoring their activities and progression. During these times I was aware how uncomfortable I could become due to the warmth and I also needed to drink more than usual during the breaks. When it was a Friday and there were 6 hours in total spent in the media classroom I often felt very tired during the afternoon and frequently had headaches. I reflected on how demanding it could be at these times to maintain my focus on observing and making notes. Occasionally, the sweat on my hands smudged my writing and I also needed to keep some paper kitchen towels in my pocket to intermittently wipe my hands and face with. Due to the warm weather the air conditioning units were on a lot of the time and those who were sitting near, or opposite to them, received a direct draught and became quite chilled.

If these conditions were detrimental to my comfort an obvious need was to investigate their effect on the students. In particular with the media students I did notice, especially on a Friday afternoon, that as with the effect on myself, the conditions did seem to affect their performance. Notably, my fieldnotes had consistent comments that on Fridays, especially, the students did less work and the afternoon sessions frequently deteriorated into casual chat and students had the demeanour of being tired. There may have been other factors contributing to this, such as the outside temperature, or if they had walked into the town for their lunch and they were hot and tired from this. However, they

should have recovered from this in a short period of time. There was also the fact that it was the end of the week and the students considered that it was time to start relaxing, or that as they were in the classroom for six hours on a Friday that was demanding on their ability to focus.

During one group interview with media students I asked them how they found the room to work in.

Debbie: But in that room on Fridays, it’s about an hour and a half work solid and I’m like,

“Oh, I’m getting on with it”. After lunch I come and I’m like, “Uhhh” [Debbie slumped

over to imitate being worn out]. And really warm. And I get dehydrated.

Another student commented on the effect of being sat near to the air conditioning unit when it was trying to reduce the temperature of the room.

Liz: It's like that with the heating though, if it's absolutely freezing like he [Bob the tutor]

won't…especially on a Wednesday, he never turns it down does he. If we're all sat there with like all our coats on and like saying, "Can you turn it off", he's like, "No".

Although the air conditioning unit appeared to make little difference to making the room more comfortable, the temperature rapidly warmed up even more if it had been switched off. The concerns over these conditions had been reported to the college estates department by tutors, but apparently the provision was deemed adequate for the room sizes.

To offer a more nuanced and extended account of tutor and student practices on a Friday when the students were in the one classroom for a total of six hours, what follows is a vignette of one Friday afternoon. The content is developed from a series of field notes made throughout that session, with the aim to illustrate students’ responses to the conditions. This example was selected, as it typified many Friday afternoons and the cultural, social and learning activities and strategies that took place. It also illustrates the administrative pressures on the tutor and the expectations on the students to demonstrate independent learning and how they respond to that, as they work towards the end of a long day in the classroom and their last day at college before the weekend. Student cohorts consist of individuals, who often form small groups, or at times detach themselves from those groups for individual needs and the diversity of activities that took place during that afternoon exemplify this. Some engage with social and cultural activities to cope with the drudgery of the prolonged period of individual studying on one task and the subsequent learning fatigue under these curriculum

strategies, others adopt proactive methods to enable them to keep on-task. For example, Seth demonstrates his self-awareness by wearing headphones with some background media playing to

maintain his focus, and to filter out the off-task activities of peers; this also replicates the practices he uses if he studies at home.

Friday afternoon in the media classroom

It’s Friday afternoon in early June and the media students are returning from their

lunchtime one-hour break. They’ve already had a three-hour morning session in the same classroom and now they have another one of three hours duration with the same tutor. Outside it’s warm and the air conditioning has been left on over the lunch period in an attempt to cool the room down. In the morning the temperature and air quality had been uncomfortable, despite the two small air conditioning units that had continuously been on their coldest settings. On most Friday lunch periods the students have a ritual of walking in small groups into the nearby town to get their lunch, which they eat on the walk back. On days like this the exercise can mean that they are very warm before they enter the classroom and it’s then some time before they can settle down – today is no exception.

In anticipation of how warm I will become in the classroom I leave the jacket I have with me in my car and I wear a lightweight shirt and trousers. I have a small shoulder bag with me that I pick up each research day knowing that it contains all my ethnography resources, which consist of my Macbook, notepads, pens and pencils, a digital voice recorder and some mint flavoured sweets and a small water bottle.

I always make sure that I’m in the classroom at least five minutes before the session is due to start. As the students enter the room Bob, the course tutor for this cohort, and tutor for both of Friday’s sessions is sat at the staff computer opposite the door and is engrossed in responding to a stream of college emails. He has already spent some of his lunch break in the room trying to catch up with them.

Despite the students’ casual chatter that continues after they sit down, Bob gives no reaction to the students entering the room, as his focus remains fixed on the emails. Usually this level of noise will bring a sharp rebuking from Bob. The tacit message is that he intends them to carry on with the work that they had been doing in the morning. This has been well rehearsed before on those afternoons when the students have sat down waiting for

instructions and then been told off by Bob for not realising that as their work in the morning had not been completed, they should have realised what they needed to do. Notably, the

work is usually the continuation of a prolonged assignment with the occasional interruption for a brief tutorial using the interactive whiteboard. Due to Bob’s preoccupation, they sit down and continue to chat amongst themselves as they try and cool down.

At the far end of the room, two small groups have formed. One group that includes Ash and Debbie continue talking and the others with Scott in pull their chairs around Simon’s computer and they watch a series of YouTube videos of people having accidents, such as falling off a swing into a river, or other stunts that have gone wrong and there’s a lot of laughter that Bob still ignores. At other times Bob would be quite firm in his response to events like this and the students would immediately be quiet. However, Friday afternoons can often be the exception.

It is approximately 20 minutes before the two groups of students who had been gathered together chatting and joking return to their own computers and are now facing their computer screens and seemingly more focused on their work. Others, such as Emma and Liz continue to quietly chat together on casual topics but they have remained at their computers.

Seth is at the far end of the room and he has his headphones on so that he can listen to a movie video, which is in one corner of his computer screen and partially obscured by the Word document he is typing in – he seldom turns his head to view the visuals of the video. He has commented before that he uses headphones to shut out any background noise from the rest of the room, so that he can focus on his work. For Seth, these are noticeably the most effective strategies that he uses, as at other times he can be far less focused on his work. I am sat at the centre table and close to Seth and the other students who had been in the small groups. Nearer the door Emma, Liz and Emily are sat next to each other; they always sit here and they have formed a small clique within the cohort. I move further up the table and nearer to them; Emma turns around and smiles as she texts on her phone at the same time. It’s not a regular classroom occurrence for any of these students to text using their phones, and often it can be a message to a parent, especially if they are picking them up in a car at the end of a session.

The room is noticeably quieter now, as everyone seems to have settled down and Bob is still focused on emails and has not checked on the students at all. Scott and Ash are sat next to

each other and both are concentrating on Word documents on their screens. They both have an array of other windows open, including a social messaging application with an ongoing conversation that keeps being added to by others and Scott only occasionally types in it. It’s as if he just wants to monitor what friends are discussing. Both students, although engaged with the Word document are moving between other on-screen windows, such as unrelated websites, including AutoTrader and switching between numerous YouTube music videos. Not that the videos are intently watched, but more something to listen to through

headphones and any videos are in the periphery of their vision. There is something of a pattern that takes place, in that there will be a few minutes of focus on the assignment in Word and then the other resources that are loaded on the screen will be quickly checked and occasionally engaged with and then the focus reverts back to the coursework. This typically illustrates the fleeting nature of student attention that I have witnessed over the academic year.

Helen has her notepad in front of her, with several lose pages that seem to have come from a different pad and she has now settled down after some casual chat with others nearby. She seems very focused on her assignment and actively moves between reading her notes, many of which are coded in the way they are highlighted, and typing. Katie is sat opposite Helen, and on some Fridays she doesn’t return after lunch. At the moment she is typing a message in German on what appears to be a German social contact website and this continues for most of the afternoon. Despite her regular periods of off-task use of the

computer tutors have commented that she achieves some of the highest grades in the cohort.

Jim sits the closest to the door, and since he arrived back he has been playing a retro style online game and the assignment he had been working on in the morning is minimised at the bottom of his screen. At the end of the day I notice that all my notes about Jim indicate that he has been playing a number of these games for the majority of the session, and there were no observation notes of him re-engaging with the work he had been more focused on during the morning.

At this point I have no intention of talking with any of the students, as they all seem to be