Lene Jensby Lange, Re-imagining knowledge and learning
Lene is the founder of Autens, specialising in 21st Century Learning and Learning Spaces
FILMED IN ROSKILDE, DENMARK, 2018
EGA-TALKS is produced by Erik Giudice Architects: interviews with experts in the field of architecture, urbanism and related areas. EGA Talks is part of EGAs ongoing cross disciplinary research aiming to envision a sustainable future
Re-imagining knowledge
Today’s world is very different in many ways, than it was when I grew up. In many ways it’s similar. It’s still people connecting, but today we have the option of connecting with so many more people and it’s a globally connected world. That really changes everything.
The whole foundation for how we can work with knowledge and how we also should work with knowledge. I think the core of of knowledge environments is that today knowledge is not something static.
It’s dynamic. It’s constructed in whatever you’re working on. You need to always try and update your knowledge. You co-create things together. Today good knowledge environments are really good social environments.
They have different components. You have the social. Like the face-to-face component. You also have a virtual or a tech component.
Just looking at our own practice, knowledge is not what we acquired during school. It is also what we acquired during school and during our studies. But it’s also keeping up-to-date all the time. When we have challenges that we are solving. Projects we’re doing is always connecting with knowledge environment around the world and locally. It’s a lot of connecting and that’s why today knowledge is very social.
Knowledge in itself, it’s not the piece of specific knowledge you know. It is being able to combine. Being able to update it. Being able to find new stuff And put it all together. This basically changes the way we think about learning in in schools.
Growing up. If you look at a very young child, knowledge is also still trying to make sense of the whole world. Of course that’s social too.
In school we want kids to acquire all sort of deeper understandings and also basic knowledge about how things work. In order for them to do so and to be successful later in life and contribute.
Learning is such an important part of of the knowledge I need today. If I’m not a good learner I will not get the necessary knowledge. So it’s also about learning to learn. We need to work very differently in our schools and universities. The world is so connected today.
That is also a big component in our work. It is working with how we can transform learning environments, to support the growth of: The development of the mind Thinking The knowledge Everything we want kids to acquire during school.
To make them aware of what they could do themselves with knowledge. That’s a lot more interesting than knowledge itself. It is what what are you able to do with knowledge?
Basically when we look at learning environments in schools, that is a type of knowledge environments. There’s a huge change going on. Away from the traditional classroom that everybody knows across the world. They are not constructed in order for as many people as possible to learn as much as possible. That’s not what the traditional classroom does.
We’re trying to change that here in Denmark and globally. We see a lot of change going on. We start to see environments where we look a lot more on different functions. Where do you collaborate? Where do you interact with other people? Where do you experiment and gain insight through experimentation? Through the application of different types of knowledge. What new knowledge would you learn from that? How can you incorporate different skills and competences in that?
We see schools with different zones. Areas where you pitch. Areas where you collaborate. Areas where your able to withdraw and just immerse yourself in something you’re looking at. It could be reading. It could be experimenting. It could be drawing. It could be a lot of things.
We need those quiet areas. We need those social areas. We need the coming together, The community areas and the sharing areas. We need innovation areas. We need a lot of things in our environments that actually supports our development of knowledge.
This sort of shared discovery of new insights. It’s not just a school thing. It’s also what you do in offices. Every now and then we look at an office and we redesign an office space.
It’s basically the same thing. Who do you need to connect with? In order to really solve the challenges that you have. The projects that you’re doing. How can we have an innovative component? How can we have environments that would nudge innovation? Nudge sharing and make things very visible, so that you know what’s going on and really make the whole space sort of a visual image of a combined community brain.
It is basically supporting a lot of different functions. More than the usual classroom or the usual office space. Where one size fits all. Here we’re trying to change the ”language” or the narrative of the environments, so that everybody has a lot of choice and can use the environment that’s suited for the specific purpose and challenge, that they’re working on at any given time.
So it’s choice, variety and flexibility in that sense. It’s visual environments. It’s surfaces for sharing.
There are also components that really helps to underpin well-being in the environment. So that people naturally connect and feel more open-minded.
It’s important to think about the atmosphere in the spaces. What kind of feelings it brings out in people? How it really supports the sense of community, well-being, belonging. That you’re able as a person to contribute and feel comfortable and at home in that space.
So it’s not only functional but it also has that sort of emotional component to it. Where we see warm environments. Lots of nature. Which really has such a calming effect on all of us. It just feels good.
It’s that combination of different functions and choice and options. A lot of possibilities with an atmosphere where you feel comfortable and at home were you are able to contribute your best. In a social environment.
Democratizing knowledge
One thing that’s really important to us as we work in education and learning, is equity.
That everybody is able to access our shared world. That they are able to create a life for themselves that is a value to them and to their communities.
It’s very important that knowledge is sort of democratized. You go back hundreds of years ago and knowledge was confined to a very few people in society. We have been democratizing. There’s been a good development of democratizing knowledge. Today knowledge is almost accessible to anybody who has a smartphone. That’s actually very beautiful.
There’s also a lot of fake knowledge out there. So how we can we enable every person to access knowledge, to understand how they learn. To find out that learning is for everybody.
It’s not just something like saying: ”School didn’t work for me” School should work for everybody! It’s about making schools very human centered. Having lots of different challenge that you ”broadcast” onto the reality.
So this is why we talk about the learning environments where we want to create choice and options for people. Because we learn in different ways. We have different preferences. Different interests and passions.
So it needs to be very flexible adaptable environments, with lots of choice where you’re able to make good decisions about your life and your education. So that it can be motivating for you. Because we have too many young people who who opt out of education. We don’t feel motivated or engaged and that’s such a loss for them and for our societies in general.
This is very important to me. A very important part in our work with knowledge environments is to to open up the world of learning and growth and development for every person.