Learning Environments of the Future: The Interaction of Education, Research, and Innovation

Christian Peer

Education is widely regarded as the key to shaping a desirable future. At the same time, it operates within the tension between historically evolved structures and contemporary demands arising from social and ecological change. Moreover, both present and future transformations are marked by a high degree of complexity and a broad spectrum of involved actors. The less plausible continuous development appears to be, and the more pluralistic ideas about the future are, the more difficult bridging the gap between old and new becomes. Given the diverse individual, collective, and systemic conditions and interests at play, education reveals itself as a multifaceted and often instrumentalized concept that is culturally determined and politically contested. Negotiation processes concerning future learning environments are therefore both inevitable and intrinsic to democratically constituted societies and their practices of social and transformative learning. [→ 1]

This essay on the learning environments of the future addresses education as a central field and point of connection for innovation and trans­for­mation. It offers a sociologically informed contex­tual­ization of educational innovation with reference to space and spatiality, beginning with a concise outline of the motivations behind the reorientation of education and a subsequent situating of the approaches and developments presented here within recent debates on spatiality in education. The concept of the educational landscape, both in its diversity and its ambivalence, as a prominent metaphor in the ongoing effort to redefine learning environments and educational spaces is introduced. With a view towards practical implemen­tation, this article culminates in a discussion of how, and to what extent, the co‑creation of educational innovation and forms of quality assurance can be achieved, and what prerequisites and resources are required to make this possible.

Education, Research, and Innovation

Innovation is a multifaceted concept, both in everyday language as a marker of desired newness and across various academic theories and frameworks. The extension of the economically and technologically oriented notion of innovation to encompass the intentional transformation of social practices has further broadened its meaning. In the context of education and society, innovation no longer refers solely to absolute novelties, but also to desirable variations that appear “new” within a specific era or context. [→ 2] In social science inno­vation research, innovation is primarily under­stood as the intentional and systematic creation of new material and immaterial elements, technical and organizational processes, and socio‑tech­nical combinations thereof—defined and legitimized as “new” and “better” in contrast to the old.

General and Specific Drivers for the Reorientation of Education

All innovation‑oriented design approaches require a fundamental under­standing of the motivations behind the reorientation of education, an under­standing contin­u­ously developed through decades of position papers, guidelines, handbooks, and trend analyses in educational discourse. These drivers reflect both broad societal transformations and, more specifically, shifts in education and building culture policy. They are interlinked and mutually influential, creating a dynamic and constantly evolving environment that brings with it both opportunities and risks.

General developments include increasing urbanization and technological change, along with global socio‑political imperatives for transformation, such as the human right to education and the right to inclusion. Systemic developments that call for change regardless of location include the peda­go­gical shift toward student‑centered, individualized, and transformative learning, and the desire for open, flexible spatial structures and diverse spatial experiences. This also includes the expansion of all‑day schooling and the implementation of inclusive education, which in turn require spaces for differentiation, retreat, and barrier‑free accessibility.

The guiding principle of sustainable development serves as an overarching framework. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and the exploitation of natural resources represent key challenges, and the coming years will be decisive in setting the course toward an ecologically viable future. Educational infrastructure exerts a significant environmental impact, primarily through construction and renovation measures as well as energy consumption. [→ 3] A large proportion of Austria’s educational buildings are still neither sustainable nor energy-efficient, and would necessitate comprehensive and resource‑intensive refurbishment to become so. Equally crucial is behavioral change among students, teachers, and parents or guardians, who can make a substantial contribution to transformation through their everyday actions and must be encouraged to do so. The confident and self‑critical assumption of active roles in applied, problem‑based, and solution‑oriented learning processes in authentic contexts is regarded as particularly valuable. [→ 4] However, such change is typically slow and often has to contend with cultural and habitual barriers.

The long-term and profound transformation of society through technological change can be clearly observed in the current dynamic of digitalization in education. This process is reshaping how we communicate, work, live, and, crucially, how we learn and teach. Automation, robotics, artificial intel­li­gence, and machine learning are taking on tasks once performed by humans, revolutionizing more and more areas of life. New forms of learning enabled by digital media pose new challenges for infrastructure and spatial design. Future learning environments will require far more than just Wi‑Fi and tablets—they need deeper discourse on how digitalization transforms education and how this transformation can remain aligned with humanistic values. Technology alone is not enough. Equally important are well‑conceived didactic concepts and a critical awareness of the social contexts in which digital learning occurs. Uniform solutions fall short: People learn in diverse ways—sometimes analog, sometimes digital, often somewhere in between. Technological progress offers new possibilities to balance individual and collective learning more effectively, but also places new demands on learning spaces, their use, and their design. Pedagogy, architecture, and spatial planning must therefore go hand in hand. In particular, hybrid learning methods that meaningfully combine digital and physical spaces represent a central task for the future, along with the responsibility to remain aware of possible downsides.

The aforementioned instances are related to overarching developments and trends, while specific situations are more dependent on regional and local contexts. These include demographic developments (student numbers vary greatly locally and regionally, resulting in individual structural consequences), neighbor­hood‑based dynamics (with the role of educational institutions depending on their social environment), educational profiles (for example, Montessori or community schools require specific spatial solutions), and financial or political conditions (such as municipal influence on planning and implementation). These location-specific factors must, in all phases of development, be addressed through participatory negotiation processes involving key stakeholders—school funders and operators, educators, architects, and other relevant actors—ideally including the active participation of the learners themselves. [→ 5]

New School Space Debates

The first decades of the twenty‑first century are characterized by a growing engagement of the education sciences with space and spatiality that, in various novel and reinterpreted forms, seeks to conceptualize space as an environment conducive to learning and development, as the topic of learning itself, and as a sphere of action, interaction, and social experience. This has led to important new impulses and innovations in recent decades. These range from spatial didactic approaches for the design of specific learning and educational environments such as schools, kindergartens, universities, and adult education centers to spatial-systemic, govern­ance‑oriented approaches that extend from systematic needs assessment and integrated development planning to forms and formats of educational and spatial governance. 

These emerging approaches are closely linked to the debates surrounding poor performance in educational assessment studies and the recognition that deficiencies in formal schooling alone are not to blame. Rather, they highlight the need to give greater attention to the diverse forms and places in which education occurs. [→ 6] In response, a more comprehensive understanding of education has been positioned as a guiding principle for the design of educational processes, which should go beyond the expansion of all‑day schooling to encompass both formal and non‑formal learning processes, granting them equivalent importance to the greatest degree possible. Formal educational settings are understood as institutionally organized, spatially anchored settings with an explicit educational mandate. Non‑formal settings, by contrast, refer to everyday, situational, and often non‑geo­graphi­cally fixed opportunities in which learning takes place. In practice, these settings and processes appear in different configurations and combinations. [→ 7]

Another key theme in recent debates on educational spaces has been the critique of how the materiality of space is often treated, particularly its dual character as both a product and a condition of human action. Caution must be taken against an overly strict separation of these two dimensions, as doing so obscures the dialectical interconnections that shape spatial processes. Such narrowing of perspective can, in turn, lead to practical problems and difficulties. [→ 8] Recognizing that the develop­ment of learning environments and educational spaces must be understood as socio‑technical phenomena, rather than being confined to either pedagogical aspects or material artefacts, has led to the insight that the interactions between material and social change need to be made visible and critically reflected upon. This calls for practices of contextualization, mediation, and negotiation.

A bridge between social innovation and sustainability is built by the concept of education for sustainable development, which evolved on the basis of earlier frameworks such as eco‑peda­gogy, environ­mental education, and development policy edu­cation. This asserts its relevance across all educational levels and explicitly seeks to also transform the structural aspects of educational orga­ni­za­tions themselves. [→ 9] From this per­spective, education and science are criticized for not contributing sufficiently to sustainable development in their current objectives and structures, but rather for perpetuating current social conditions. In alignment with recent debates in educational science, there are calls to assume social respon­si­bility and for a fundamental paradigm shift towards holistic, integrated, and transformative approaches. [→ 10]

Spatial Didactic Approaches to the Design of Concrete Learning and Educational Environments

Spatial didactic approaches include both archi­tectural and educational aspects, with varying degrees of emphasis. They build upon earlier theoretical, discursive, model‑based, and practical traditions, including the notion of space as the third teacher or variations on the organic architecture of early school buildings. Further­more, they incorporate discussions about suitable floor plans—for example referring to concepts of landscape in the sense of an open learning landscape or clusters in the sense of a “learning cluster.” [→ 11] These developments share the common goal of influencing social and educational processes through the design of the learning environment. When understood as didactic tools, they provide an essential prerequisite for exploring the possibilities of designing and implementing educational innovations, making their outcomes visible and tangible, and leading to better understanding and learning from their effects and framework conditions. For beyond shaping the immediate physical and material world, designing space as a pedagogical environment always involves engaging with the social and institutional frameworks that define its use. [→ 12]

How, then, can we bridge the gap between these design approaches, experi­mental developments, and innovations in educational architecture and further educational innovations and societal transformation? In recent educational research on space and spatiality, the concept of the educational landscape has become established as a key term, particularly in German-speaking countries. Educational and building culture policies founded upon this concept are, however, only just beginning to take shape in practice.

Approaches to the Spatial and Governance Structuring of Educational Landscapes

While spatial didactic approaches focus on the design of specific learning and educational spaces, approaches centered on spatial and governance-based structuring shift attention toward territorial and systemic perspectives. While discussions about learning and educational spaces primarily focus on buildings, their furnishings and equipment, and their associated greenspaces and outdoor areas, the discourse on educational landscapes addresses broader interrelations and interdependencies among actors and levels within the educational system, and beyond that, integrated spatial development con­cepts, comprehensive policy frameworks, and new governance models linking education and space. 

The educational landscape serves as an umbrella term connecting educational theory and policy with questions of organizational structure and conceptual development. [→ 13] As a political and programmatic concept, the educational landscape represents an effort to build an integrated system of education, care, and upbringing, often accompanied by a shift towards decentralizing compe­tences, respon­si­bilities, and decision‑making to municipal, local, and regional levels. At the same time, the term remains contested. It is only loosely defined and lacks consistent objectives and content. Furthermore, integrated approaches such as those in the educational landscape are said to suffer from a discrepancy between comprehensive top‑down demands, concrete implementation, and actual effectiveness. In this sense, the educational landscape is also characteristic of today’s struggle for a new paradigmatic turn in educational architecture against the backdrop of competing design intentions and the associated power and dominance relations.

Learning Environments and Educational Landscapes of the Future

What does this mean for the design of future learning environments? They must meet both universal and specific local requirements for a realignment of education. Increasing importance is being placed on pro­cess‑oriented qualities and the integration of cyclical relationships—that is, on the systematic and periodic reflection on what is expected of education, how it develops, what effects it produces, what design opportunities exist, which solutions prove appropriate, and how imple­men­tation and governance can be optimized. What, specifically, is needed to help shape educational innovation? Molding the transformation of learning environments is challenging, as it requires multi- and transdisciplinary forms of collaboration and, in the spirit of broad participation, a multiperspective and methodologically plural approach that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. This requires public, civil society, and private sector structures, instruments, and networks that can facilitate cooperation among diverse stakeholders. These stakeholders—operating within the broader context of innovation and trans­formation—must master specific skills and competencies to navigate multifaceted negotiation and learning processes amid conflicting interests, to sustain civic engagement as the face of bureaucratic obstacles, and to organize collective resistance against neoliberal tendencies, among other challenges. Given the complexity and inherent dynamics of societal innovation processes, critical reflection on the instrumentalization of education has become an increasingly vital aspect of transformative learning. In this sense, education always carries both an orientational function and a mandate for action. A responsible education policy must ultimately ensure the continuous and systematic evaluation of the effec­tive­ness of the education system, must foster reflexive feedback loops between expectations and outcomes, and must enable the adjustment of goals and evaluative frameworks whenever necessary.