From plans to pedagogy: developing teachers’ spatial competencies in one Australian school

This research seeks to understand how teachers effectively engage in the design, development and use of innovative learning environments within primary and secondary schools in Australia and New Zealand. Innovative learning spaces are defined here as open, flexible and creatively-used spaces within which teachers and students collaborate to learn. There is seen to be a continuum of space types from entirely open, flexible spaces to closed, traditional classrooms that accommodate one teacher and one group of students (Imms, Mahat, Byers, & Murphy, 2017). The focus school for this paper is located in the Australian Capital Territory. A case-study, mixed-methods methodology has highlighted that innovative learning spaces may increase student engagement in learning and teachers’ use of evidence-based, student-centred pedagogies.