Gerald Ajam

Explore / Counterposition

“Flexible furniture creates flexible learning”

Movable tables make regrouping cheaper. A routine is what makes it happen.

Status Position

Published September 2026

All counterpositions

The strongest formulation

Fixed rows make some forms of learning expensive. Furniture that moves lowers the cost of group work, discussion and changing activity, so more of it happens.

Why it is attractive

Furniture is visible, purchasable and finished on a date. It lets an organisation show change in a way a new routine cannot.

Where it holds

It holds where teachers already want to regroup and the old room was the obstacle. There, lowering the cost of moving does change what happens.

Where it breaks

It breaks when the routine is missing. A room of movable tables that is never reconfigured is a conventional room with a higher price tag, and participation rules shape who talks far more than chairs do.

What evidence matters

Barrett et al. (2015), the Clever Classrooms study, associate basic environmental factors such as light, air quality and temperature with pupil progress. Evidence that any fashionable configuration outperforms a well-run conventional room is much thinner, and novelty and volunteer enthusiasm confound most refurbishment studies. What matters is observed change in activity, sustained after the first term.

More precisely

A more precise version

Movable furniture lowers the cost of changing activity, and learning changes when that affordance is paired with a routine that uses it.

Singapore