External: Learnings/Unlearnings: Environmental learning, spatial design, and participatory pedagogies within institutions and beyond
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As educational environments continue to evolve and support increasingly diverse learning needs, the importance of re-evaluating their purpose, design and use remains essential if communities wish to foster pedagogical space that is both inclusive and equitable. There are many concepts and methods that allow for a re-appraisal of formal, informal and non-formal learning environments. These include environmental learning (Adams, 1989; Ward and Fyson, 1973), situated pedagogies (Dewey, 1899; Kitchens, 2009; Perez-Martinez, 2019), place-based education (Gruenewald, 2003; Yemeni, 2023), and civic pedagogy[1] (Coleman 1998; Antaki et al 2024). Such intersecting and interdisciplinary approaches have enabled theorists, practitioners and learners to advance critical understandings of the central role that space, place and belonging has for educational process, whether it be located within, beyond or on the edges of the institution.
To realise this, built environment professionals and creative practitioners, as well as educationalists and policymakers, have long advocated for learning to happen beyond institutional walls to facilitate learners’ engagement with the different environments they inhabit, both designed and natural. These methods extend from the local to the global, yet tend to emphasise the experiential, material, and spatial, while prioritising values of cooperation, and social and environmental justice (Dodig et al, 2025).
At the same time, the physical site of the learning institution, whether it be school, museum or university, continues to be scrutinised to understand how educational space responds to increasingly diverse user needs, as well as supporting social and ecological imperatives. To this end, historians, theoreticians and practitioners ask how questions of materiality, design, space and pedagogy intersect to support or restrict student agency, learning, wellbeing and community engagement (Brookes et al, 2025; Burke, 2005; Syeed, 2022).
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