20 Kostas Dimopoulos
Figure 7. A multi-centered floor plan of a post modern classroom.
All three of the aforementioned case studies exemplify in many different ways the
fundamental shift of weakening classifications as a feature characterizing the transition from
modern to post modern schooling. This transition is very well captured in the words of
Foucault who argues that ―The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space.
We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the
near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed.‖ Foucault (1986, p. 22).
3.2. Semiotic Resources for Framing
Social action and interaction are inextricably embedded within the material setting. This
is exactly the reason why framing is a very relevant concept in examining the material culture
of schooling.
According to the definition of framing, it follows that this concept corresponds to the
degree of explicitness that the legitimate school code is communicated to its receivers
(students). According to Foucault, (1977) schools can be regarded as ̳normalizing‘
institutions exerting power. As Foucault writes: ―[discipline] ̳trains‘ the moving, confused,
useless multitudes of bodies and forces them into a multiplicity of individual elements ...
[and] combinatory segments‖ (1977, p.170).