Historically, classrooms have utilized stationary furniture, facing front toward a centralized instructor position, and limiting student-to-student interactions. Such classrooms often stem from design processes that tend to focus on building codes and feedback from investors, architects, and planners, which leaves little input from instructors and…

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…

On September 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, commonly known as the 1994 crime bill. The most far-reaching piece of criminal justice legislation Congress ever passed, the bill incentivized states to pass harsher sentencing laws and build more prisons. Among a slate of punitive and…

Through a conceptual framework focused on student engagement, this article explores students' perceptions about the impact the design of learning environments has on student engagement. The current mixed-methods study was conducted at two Texas replacement elementary schools where the entire learning community, all teachers, administrators, staff,…

Multiage, child-size, and accessible, the Montessori classroom provides a prepared environment that maximizes self-regulated activity. Designed to be intuitive and conducive to children's development at multiple developmental planes, the classroom nurtures each child's growing independence. Ideally, the principles underlying the Montessori…

This book brings together the notions of material school design and educational governance in the first such text to address this critical interrelationship in any depth. In addressing the issue of governance through analysing current and historical material school designs, it looks at the intersection of politics, economics, aesthetics and…

This exploratory case study examined the kinds of activity that a 'deskless school" (i.e., flexible physical school spaces) engenders among pupils and teachers. We also considered the meaning and significance that pupils and teachers attach to various features of the school, as well as the associated action possibilities. The data were…

Understanding the relationship between innovative learning spaces and teachers' pedagogical and social practices is essential given the increasing investment in innovative learning spaces worldwide. This study examined the socio-spatial practices of a group of teachers at a secondary school in an innovative learning space. Interview responses from…

New evidence builds upon the Student Engagement IndexTM and Teacher Engagement IndexTM research (Scott-Webber, Konyndyk, & French, 2019; Scott-Webber, Konyndyk, French, & French, 2018; Scott-Webber, Konyndyk, French, Lembke, & Kinney, 2017) determining post-occupancy answers to, "Can we demonstrate that the design of the built…

Lone Star College had a unique opportunity in 2000 when it began planning its new CyFair campus in suburban Houston. The school wasn't retrofitting existing buildings or contending with entrenched attitudes about what type of physical environment best supported learning. So when it designed its sprawling 550,000-square-foot campus, paid for with…

Many elementary school teachers with a passion for teaching social studies are finding that the administratively defined time for direct instruction in social studies is becoming increasingly restricted. Fortunately for the teacher who is convinced that social and civic education should be at the center of the elementary school curriculum, where…

Major ideas and implications discussed in the volume are used to pose a series of critical considerations regarding learning environment construction in the future. (EV)

Offers a rationale for increasing attention to learning space design, providing an overview of relevant literature and highlighting implications for learning spaces suggested by modern learning theory. (EV)

Details characteristics of good learning spaces and provides an overview of innovative models from campuses around the country. (EV)

Scholarship on factors that promote or hinder academic success of college students abounds, much of it focusing on learning gains and institutional retention of first-year students (Reason, Terenzini, and Domingo, 2006; Terenzini and Reason, 2005; Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005; Braxton, 2000; Astin, 1993; Tinto, 1987). More recently,…