Emerging methods for the evaluation of physical learning environments

Abstract

The field of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) has provided direction on how evidence can be gathered about the performance of educational facilities for over 40 years (Cooper, 2001). However, such work has generally overlooked the evaluation of learning spaces for pedagogical effectiveness, i.e. the suitability of the physical environment in supporting desired teaching and learning practices, activities and behaviours. This chapter calls for, and introduces, new methods of learning environment evaluation that attempt to make explicit the connections between pedagogy and space. It also outlines a suggested framework for the further development of such methods. The research is currently being conducted at the University of Melbourne in connection with the Evaluating 21st Century Learning Environments (E21LE) ARC Linkage project. Findings so far have indicated that a return to the origins of post-occupancy evaluation in the field of environmental psychology is required to support the development of evaluation methods that take into account both the physical and social components of the environment. Feedback is needed on just how effective specific ‘units of the environment’ (Barker, 1968) are as pedagogical settings.