Impact of secondary school learning spaces on teaching and learning
Our project partner Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane (Churchie) has been actively involved in research for several years with a number of institutions. The partnership with The University of Melbourne Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN) is long standing and continues through our project.
In a new publication, The Finished Beginning, Dr Terry Byers and A/Prof. Wesley Imms report on the longitudinal New Generation Learning Spaces (NGLS) project. It presents one of the first longitudinal empirical studies that evaluates the impact of secondary school learning spaces on teaching and learning. It addresses significant gaps in the literature around an approach and a suite of tools able to measure the pedagogical impact of different learning environments.
Dr Terry Byers is Director of the Churchie Centenary Library and Research Fellow, ILETC Project, University of Melbourne.
This novel approach isolated the impact of different learning environments to examine then how they influence student and teacher activity and behaviour. The evidence suggests that when considering the impact of the physical learning environment on learning, how it is inhabited is at least as important as its design.
This study is informing our approach in developing strategies to support teachers use of learning spaces in their practice.
