The government school has held an integral part in the Australian idea of progressive society, a locus of community definition and pride that is the backbone of social infrastructure. Yet, it took decades from the establishment of the Australian British colonies from 1788 to establish a system of general education. The Australian school had modest…

This brief analysis is a call for action with fresh opportunities for leadership and innovation. Teachers, teacher educators, and their allies need to take stock of needs and opportunities to serve as program architects and ambassadors. This is a game-changer because, until now, professionals were charged with faithful implementation and advocacy…

This article synthesises longitudinal deliberations between two architects and an educator, seeking common ground about learning spaces in schools. As the impetus for new and refurbished school buildings continues in New Zealand, it is timely to unpack instinctual disciplinary practices to better understand space and place in schools. We undertook…

School bathrooms are liminal spaces where notions about intimacy and one's public persona are configured and where issues such as sex and gender are centrally experienced and proved. These learnings are partially scripted by architectural design and pedagogical rules but not fully captured by them. In this article, I intend to historicise these…

This article explores the ideological drivers behind learning environment discourses with a particular focus on the built environment and the ways in which the built environment narrates explicit and implicit ideology. The built environment reinforces ways of thinking in the day-to-day ordinary activities of the school space. However, it is…

The purpose of this conceptual work is to explore ways in which K-12 classrooms can be used as a physical and abstract model for society in which students can practice becoming effective, participatory citizens. The authors framed this manuscript around ways in which the K-12 learning environment can be transformed into "a miniature community…

The relationship between school buildings and their pedagogies is complex. There is a consensus that the built environment through its structure and organisation can impact education, but it is often unclear or unknown how this happens in individual cases. Here we examine one design process, which led to the construction of a secondary school in…

This article explores connections between interprofessional education (IPE) models and the design of learning spaces for undergraduate and graduate education in the anatomical sciences and other professional preparation. The authors argue that for IPE models to be successful and sustained they must be embodied in the environment in which…

This issue of the "European Journal of Education" examines a crucially important, though largely overlooked, area in educational design research: architecting and building physical educational environments. Effective policymaking in school design necessitates the negotiated, shared and timely input of key educational stakeholders,…

Learning space research is a relatively new field of study that seeks to inform the design, evaluation and management of learning spaces. This paper reviews a dispersed and fragmented literature relevant to understanding connections between university learning spaces and student learning activities. From this review, the paper distils a number of…

Since 2000, when education reform in Serbia began education goals, teachers' training, curriculum and teaching/learning methods have been modernised and improved. However, a closer examination of the schools built from 2000 onwards reveals that architectural design of primary schools rests on standardised school design schemes from socialist…

Why look back to imagine the future? Given the almost universal consensus that higher level technology-enhanced learning should lead in the design of school buildings, what place is there for low-level (non-digital) technologies in education? What can we learn from revisiting schools that were at one time seen to be internationally pioneering in…

The Sarasota County School Building Program 1955-1960 is revisited through a detailed examination of how architects and educators collaborated to design an innovative group of public schools that provided opportunities for the transformation of learning space. This multi-dimensioned examination is grounded in an historical contextualization of the…

The architectural design process is based on a creative phase where creativity is highly valued. Although the literature on creativity is rich in ways to stimulate the decision-making process, these tools are rarely formally present in the building design process. To further the discussion on creativity and design education this paper presents a…

During the years following the Second World War, there were efforts in several European countries to grasp the opportunity to re-imagine "school" created through the need to rebuild on a mass scale. This article examines in detail an episode in the exchange of knowledge between English and Danish architects and educators during a period…