27.4.4 Modern Learning Environments
‘Modern Learning Environments’(MLE’s, also known as‘Innovative Learning
Spaces’) have become very popular in the New Zealand primary sector over the last
few years. These involve creating new teaching and learning areas that are more
flexible for several teachers working together, differentiated learning in small
groups and using digital technologies. This is done either through new construction
or through changing the architecture, layout and furniture in existing school
buildings. Although there are likely to be some genuine educational benefits to the
new arrangements, a dimension of MLEs often not considered by teachers and
principals is the opportunities they open up for the private sector including con-
sultants working in this area of‘future-focused education’, furniture manufacturers,
architects and construction companies/consortia. Moreover although some involved
are supposedly not for profit or philanthropic, their outlook and networks may still
align closer to GERM than to quality public education.
27.5 Conclusion
This chapter has repeatedly emphasised the need for teachers to think more criti-
cally on the assumption that this is necessary if they are to take action to contest,
disrupt or undermine the more subtle elements of global education reform.
Although New Zealand primary teachers can be admired for their public opposition
to GERM, based on the examples given here there is room for more vigilance. Part
of the problem could be that there is no single GERM, but rather many versions
(GERMs). National contexts and trajectories of reform mean that governments push
on different policies at different times in different countries. This sometimes makes
GERM harder to recognise even if the overall direction is similar.
What teachers can actually do if they have greater understanding depends on the
spaces available for agency in relation to particular issues. In some cases, it may be
possible to individually or collectively reject some unwanted development, in other
instances it may be about taking a more token approach, while sometimes it might
prove necessary to go with a required reform but keep up a running critique of it.
Furthermore, when teachers or principals seem to be supporting some manifestation
of GERM, they may sometimes be doing so in a critically informed way in order to
get purchase and influence the initiative:‘better to be in the tent’etc. Nevertheless
there is a risk in being incorporated even as influence is being gained.
It is probably unrealistic to expect much leadership to come from
university-based teacher educators given what is happening in New Zealand uni-
versities and their teacher education programmes. New Zealand education aca-
demics are becoming less outspoken for the reasons already mentioned and perhaps
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