Too often spaces for classes in rhetoric and composition are simply generic classrooms, with an instructor podium or desk, twenty-five student desks, whiteboards (or black or green), maybe a bulletin board, and perhaps a projection system and screen. As a discipline, we are victims of our own excellence as teachers, accepting what is available and assuming that’s sufficient. But what if we followed the practice of colleagues in other disciplines by defining our philosophy, goals, and expected outcomes and then describing the physical spaces that would help us best attain them?

This webtext is about just such a scenario: how our Writing and Communication Program’s philosophy, pedagogy, and research practices came to be reflected in the spaces where we teach, conduct scholarly activities, and engage in professional development.[1] The stories about our spaces involve several generalizable practices that could help other programs and departments articulate their own philosophies, influencing policies that shape decision making.

Before telling our stories, we must acknowledge three disciplinary changes that are needed. First, we must acknowledge the need for a shift in mind set in rhetoric and composition, a change in disciplinary expectations to desire more than satisficing—a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice (Simon 1956), an attitude characterized by making due with what’s good enough. In the case of space in rhetoric and composition, satisficing leads to generic rooms, generic furniture, and generic technology: nothing designed specifically for our disciplinary needs. Universities routinely optimize space for courses in areas such as architecture, art, engineering, and science, but seldom optimize space for courses in rhetoric and composition, in part because we—as a discipline—infrequently articulate what we want or need beyond the generic things that will help us teach more effectively and help our students learn more effectively. As Herbert A. Simon (1956) observed, we cannot make optimal decisions if we cannot identify and evaluate the outcomes we expect and the resources we need to make them happen.

Second, we must acknowledge that a substantial body of research, inside and outside of rhetoric and composition, supports our discipline’s need to attend to issues relating to space, student attitudes, and performance. Several decades of conversation have explored the relationship among the natural environment, the architecture of the building, the built environment of the classroom or tutoring center (e.g., seating, classroom spaces, density, privacy, noise, windows, and spaces for interaction), and their effect on K–college student behavior, attitudes, and achievement. (See Pascarella, Terenzini, and Hibel 1978; Weinstein 1979 as examples of long-established research). Broadly, as Douglas M. Walls, Scott Schopieray, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (2009) noted, our disciplinary goal is to change “learning spaces from their static configurations—which typically promote a particular and limited type of interaction—to flexible, technology-friendly spaces that support a range of interaction types and encourage collaboration” (271). More specifically, several scholars draw attention to ways in which space affects the human interaction that shapes our teaching­ and learning (e.g., Meeks 2004; Miller-Cochran and Gierdowski 2013).

Attention to space and place in rhetoric and composition has taken a number of paths. In the past dozen years, for example, these paths have included Geoffrey Sirc’s English Composition as a Happening (2002); attention to space in writing center research (e.g., McKinney 2005); the point/counterpoint between Dylan B. Dryer (2008) and Mary Jo Reiff (2011) in the Journal of Advanced Composition; and a special issue of Kairos (Haley-Brown, Holmes, and Kimme Hea 2012) focusing on spatial praxes: theories of space, place, and pedagogy, which does a fine job of delineating some of the many uses of “space” in rhetoric and composition. These paths also have included various mapping projects—ranging from the work of Chris Thaiss and Tara Porter (2005–2007) in their International WAC/WID Mapping Project (http://mappingproject.ucdavis.edu/) to that of Diane Jakacki (2012) in mapping the Queen’s Men touring practices in early modern England (http://tarltonproject.org/?page_id=242).

We support the argument made by Nancy Van Note Chism (2009) that “space can have a powerful impact on learning.” She contended that effective learning benefits from spaces that are flexible, comfortable, stimulating, supportive of technology, and decentered. Physical and political characteristics such as these influence both the creation and the reception of arguments (Bemer 2010). In fact, flexible, receptive  workspaces become part of the interaction, influencing, for example, decisions about collaboration and uses of technology (Bemer, Moeller, & Ball, 2009).

Third, as a discipline, we must acknowledge the value of paying particular attention to literal, physical space and the resulting political and pedagogical implications. Scott Barnett (2012) argued that space is a “dynamic, ongoing process of relations involving people, discourses, objects, ideologies, histories, and the built and natural environments that together help establish the conditions of lived experience in the world.” Because of our programmatic experience, we believe that political factors should be acknowledged in the construction of new or renovated spaces. Simply put, space is political in that it reflects institutional attitudes toward programs by the location, size, and condition of the space and by the budget to renovate, furnish, and maintain that space.

Spaces for educational architecture should include but should not be limited to design basics such as inviting entrances, appropriate instructional areas, quiet places for reflection, wide corridors, natural light, workable circulation and traffic patterns, acoustic control, access to appropriate technology, and spaces for group activities. In 1997, the University of Georgia’s School Design and Planning Laboratory developed criteria now widely used across the country to “help make physical learning environments more ‘teacher and learner-friendly’ in a multicultural society” (Tanner 2000, 310). Many of these “design patterns” are visible in our new spaces and explicitly consider exterior space, personal space, pedagogical space, office space, infrastructure, movement, interior design, and security and functionality.

Note

[1] At Georgia Tech, the Writing and Communication Program is responsible for first-year composition, business/technical communication, and courses in thesis and proposal writing required of students in Georgia Tech’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program—a total of approximately six thousand students per year. Our Writing and Communication Program has its institutional home in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, which in 1990 morphed from an English department into a broader, more interdisciplinary school.

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