Future Learning Spaces in Schools: Concepts and Designs from the Learning Sciences

As institutions invest time and money into constructing or redesigning spaces to meet educational goals of the innovation age, it is prudent for designers to be guided by lessons learned from research. Based on a synthesis of four leading future learning spaces, a novel conceptualization is offered here to advance both scholarship and practice of future learning spaces. Specifically, this synthesis distinguishes between two types of spaces: content-flexible and content-specific. Content-flexible spaces are dedicated for instruction or open learning, while content-specific spaces are used as a stage for learning or as sources of content. In addition to this conceptualization, eight principles about the process of establishing future learning spaces and about specific features of their designs are provided based on interviews of lead designers of the four exemplars considered for this paper. The analysis of these principles shows that developmental principles are relatively fixed, while design principles have a wider range of diversity. These conclusions provide formative knowledge for designers of future learning spaces.