Becoming actors and sites of control: the relational interplay of school architecture, institutions and children as students

Significant investment into school building across the Eurocentric world in the 21st century attests to the assumed transformative potential of school architecture. A new generation of school buildings intends to support emerging pedagogies by shifting from teacher-led school environments to student-centred learning environments. The flexible and adaptable architecture aims to foster student agency, self-directed learning and freedom of movement by providing spaces beyond constant conventional surveillance. However, existing research suggests that transforming school buildings doesn’t eliminate the element of control within schools but merely changes its forms. This article offers additional insight into various mechanisms of control emerging within institutionally structured environments. In an ethnographically grounded approach in Finland, we explore how the new school architecture, the conventional school institution, and the children at school shape and transform one another (with)in practices of control. We argue that these three elements become both actors and sites of control though a complex dynamic of producing each other relationally. We propose that the new school spaces – intended to move away from traditional forms of direct control – intersect with the sedimented structures of institutional authority. These dynamics manifest within children’s bodies, which in turn become sites where control is enacted and maintained.