Physical learning environments’ supportiveness to innovative pedagogies: students’ and teachers’ experiences

Several studies examined the assumption that the PLE must fit the characteristic learning settings of innovative education as described by Thornburg (2004) and Fisher (2006, 2007). Fisher suggests applying at least three learning modalities in learning spaces: the traditional teacher-centred mode, with unilaterally oriented furniture arrangements apt for presentations; the student-centred mode, with concentric furniture arrangements apt for collaboration; and the informal mode, with casual furniture arrangements apt for informal interactions. Empirical studies confirm that such innovatively configured spaces stimulate more student-centred pedagogies (Byers et al., 2018b; Cleveland, 2016; Jorion et al., 2016). Teachers feel encouraged to change their teaching style (Byers et al., 2014) and students experience more active, collaborative, and creative learning activities compared with their peers in traditional classrooms (Byers et al., 2018a).

However, whether the PLE’s possibilities are used depends on the teachers’ “spatial competency” (Lackney, 2008) to recognise and apply those possibilities. Teachers and students do not immediately recognise the pedagogical settings that can be applied in innovative PLEs (Cleveland, 2016) because these PLEs are fundamentally different from the traditional PLEs with which they are familiar (Fisher & Newton, 2014), and because they are often unaware of the intentions of the commissioners and designers (Daniels et al., 2019). Both teachers and students have to develop new spatial competencies in a trial-and-error process (Cleveland, 2016). The ease with which users develop these new competencies varies from person to person (Mulcahy et al., 2015). Teachers who are able and willing to expand and align their pedagogy adapt quickly and benefit most from the PLE’s possibilities (Byers et al., 2018a). Cleveland's research (2016) indicates that involving teachers in discussions regarding use experiences can contribute to their understanding of the PSLE-PLE relationship. However, the construction of new pedagogical practice appears to be hampered if a team does not experience a sense of ownership of the space (Cleveland, 2016; Woodman, 2016).

As Woodman (2016) points out, the actors interpret the PLE's flexibility differently. Policy makers and architects mainly associate flexibility with physical adaptability, while teachers and students associate flexibility mainly with the PLE’s diversity and unobstructed movement. Observations of pedagogical practice show that the diversity of spaces and furniture arrangements contribute to the diversity of both teachers’ pedagogical repertoire and students’ learning activities (Byers et al., 2018b; Kariippanon et al., 2018, 2019). Teachers feel better equipped to adapt their pedagogies to individual students’ needs (Byers et al., 2014; Kariippanon et al., 2018). The open and non-hierarchical furniture arrangements promote more movement, facilitating teacher–student and student–student interactions (Kariippanon et al., 2018). Teachers experience that, without their traditional and fixed place at the front, they tend to move around more, having more interactive moments with more students. Students experience that diversity and free movement enable them to work where they feel and perform best (Mulcahy et al., 2015). In contrast to PLE’s diversity, the PLE's rearrange-ability seems to be hardly used in the pedagogical practice. Woodman (2016) observed that users rarely rearrange the furniture arrangements, although they had stated that rearrange-ability was important to them. Woodman’s research indicates that space ownership could be at play. Without sense of ownership, teachers and students don’t feel free to rearrange the furniture.

Research confirms that connections between spaces in a learning cluster support the flow and change of learning activities (Bradbeer et al., 2017). Teachers mention that the spatial connections between spaces in a learning cluster enable them to mix student groups and stimulate peer-learning, as well as changing group compositions in response to changing learning needs (Byers et al., 2018b). Students mention that they have better access to teachers and peers, thereby stimulating collaborative learning and socialising and enhancing the community’s cohesiveness (Mulcahy et al., 2015). However, teachers struggle to empower students to move to other places, as they experience this as a loss of control (Woodman, 2016). Dovey and Fisher (2014) suggest that maybe this is why teachers consider the visual connections important for supervising the learning processes. Students experience this supervision as inconsistent, with teacher’s expecting that they should be self-regulating. As Daniels et al. (2019) point out, teachers' perceptions of the need for supervision influence students' appreciation of visual openness. When teachers put emphasis on supervision, students dislike the openness because they feel watched, when otherwise, they value the openness for promoting social contacts.

PLE openness is also experienced as ambivalent in the teacher–teacher relationship. According to teachers, openness supports teachers’ collaboration and offers opportunities to learn from each other. However, some teachers also experience this as a threat, because others could observe their pedagogical failures (Mulcahy et al., 2015). Moreover, unlike traditional PLEs where teachers worked individually in separate rooms, teachers in innovative PLEs have to collaborate because, without coordination, the openness of the room causes acoustic disturbances between activities (Daniels et al., 2019; Kariippanon et al., 2018). Teachers have to learn how to organise the shared use of the innovative PLE (Saltmarsh et al., 2015).

Research indicates that ownership of a fixed place—where students can meet their peers and teachers for learning activities—strengthens engagement and affiliation, especially if the users are empowered to personalise their space (Cleveland, 2016; Woodman, 2016). For students, the personalisation of a space through their own action creates a strong bond; much stronger than the display of students’ projects that teachers associate with personalising the PLE. However, personalisation of a space by a specific group implicitly signals restrictions on access and use by others (Scott-Webber, 2004). This ownership of the space by a specific group can conflict with the flexible use of spaces by a learning community consisting of more groups. If other groups use these personalised spaces, this might lead to distancing and frustration with those who personalised the space (Woodman, 2016).

The above overview gives an impression of current insights, showing that empirical studies confirm the relationships between the PSLE and the PLE’s fitness, flexibility, connection, and personalisation, but also that these relationships are ambiguous and mediated and moderated by the PLSE’s system aspects, including the sharing of control and the pedagogical practice’s order and organisation. The empirical research underlines that the PSLE-PLE relationship can only be properly understood from a relational, psychosocial-physical approach, which does not separate people (the psychosocial environment) and their physical environment, but regards them as constantly interacting with each other.

This overview shows that progress has been made in recent years, but also that additional empirical evidence is still needed. Compared with the many aspects involved, the number of studies is limited. The spread across school types, education systems and cultures is too small to draw general conclusions. Research often focuses on primary and secondary schools and is frequently part of temporary government investment programs. In addition, the results are usually descriptive, or otherwise established with different theoretical frameworks. Aspects are classified or operationalised differently. The psychosocial and physical elements with which these aspects are associated are not always identified. Without systematic ordering of the results in an overarching theoretical framework—such as the PPR framework—the studies are difficult to compare and aggregate.

The transformation of both the PSLE and PLE at the NHL-Stenden University of Applied Sciences (NHLS), Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, provided a unique opportunity to conduct this study to enhance knowledge about the relationship between innovative PSLEs and PLEs, particularly in higher education. The NHLS was created by a merger of two Universities of Applied Sciences in 2018. In this merger process, a shared pedagogical vision was formulated, based on the exchange of pedagogical experiences of both universities and steered by the literature about innovative pedagogies, including Problem Based Learning (Loyens et al., 2013), Universal Design for Learning (Hall et al., 2012) and Self Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2008). This innovative pedagogical vision—Design Based Education (DBE)—is based on a social-constructivist approach combined with self-regulated, contextual and research-oriented learning within a learning community (Geitz & de Geus, 2019). DBE acknowledges that academic and social bonding appear to be predictors of study success (Jensen & Jetten, 2015; Kerby, 2015). Students—organised in groups of approximately 24—work on practice-related assignments (Gruenewald, 2003; Zandvliet, 2014) with support from a teaching team. Actual and complex issues are tackled in an iterative process in which knowledge is constructed and applied in the development of solutions to bridge the gap between the current and the intended situation. This process distinguishes different phases, analogous to the Design Thinking process: empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping, testing, evaluating and improving (Scheer et al., 2012). Together with the teaching team of 10–15 teachers, the students form learning communities related to a specific field to share and create knowledge in collaboration between students, teachers and external partners in a dialogical process (Biesta, 2013). Based on the experiences of the Design Factory at the Aalto University (Björklund et al., 2019) and of the department Built Environment at TU Delft, each learning community has its own physical place within which the learning community’s pedagogical spaces are clustered, including the workplaces of teachers and students. Because of the small-scale size of the learning community—with approximately 250–350 students using a dedicated area within the campus—and the organisation of education in groups, the policymakers expect that the students will feel socially affiliated (Deci & Ryan, 2008). In anticipation of the merger and the institute-wide introduction of DBE, various teaching teams were applying DBE already. These teams were encouraged to renovate their PLE, based on their assumptions about the requirements their new PSLE would impose on the PLE. Around 30 PLE transformations have been realised in recent years.

From these innovative PLEs, six cases were selected on the basis of criteria including generalisability, representativeness, and feasibility to participate. Nine cases are located at long travel distances from the campus, which presented limitations for participation; nine cases are very highly specialised laboratories or professional working environments which limit generalisation; two cases were still in development, and two were no longer available at the time of the study. From the remaining eight, six were willing to participate. The innovative PLEs are spatially-typologically varied, from a single space to a learning cluster. The PSLEs are also varied, because the various teams incorporate the DBE approach in their own way in their PSLE, tailored to their discipline and learning community. For space plans and a short description per case, see Table 4 in the Appendix.

This study focused on the users of the innovative learning environment because users can provide rich qualitative data that is important for gaining a deeper understanding of the PSLE-PLE relationship (Moos, 1980). Taking into account the different representations, three focus groups were composed for each case: a focus group for students who experience the learning environment (the attained PSLE-PLE); one for the teachers who put the psychosocial-spatial learning environment into practice (the implemented PSLE-PLE); and one for those teachers—mostly team staff—involved in the design of the psychosocial-spatial learning environment (the intended PSLE-PLE). The contact persons for these cases were asked to recruit respondents for these focus groups, with the request to recruit respondents with sufficient experience with the new PSLE-PLE. In two cases, the PLE is designed by the team together with the students every semester. In those cases, no separate team staff group was formed (see Table 2).

Interviews were conducted as focus group interviews, whereby the experiences of an interviewee can be supplemented or contradicted by the others. The interviews were held in an online environment in May and June 2020, when the PLE was not accessible because of Covid-19. An interview guideline was written with an introduction, explanation of the purpose of the interview and five pre-formulated question (one question for each aspect of the sub-dimension of Individualisation) and, finally, an open question inviting the interviewees to provide information that had not yet been discussed. During the interview, the script was largely used as a checklist because interviewees already had mentioned the aspects and perceived relations of their own accord. In order to get the best possible insight into their construction of the network of relationships, the interviewer did not interrupt their train of thoughts. The interviews were recorded with the consent of the participants. After anonymous transcription, recordings were deleted.

To analyse the interviews, a provisional codebook was constructed based on the PPR framework’s sub-dimensions and aspects of the PSLE and the PLE (cf. Miles & Huberman, 1994). An audit procedure was followed to test the comprehensibility, consistency and reliability of the coding (Akkerman et al., 2008). Two researchers, a lecturer-researcher from the NHLS Department of Built Environment and the first author of this article, independently coded two transcribed interviews. More than 80% of the aspects and relationships were coded in the same way. When codes turned out to be unclear, the name and description were adjusted to obtain the same understanding. Where necessary, a new code was added to the codebook, or existing codes were combined, broken down into sub-aspects, or removed. After coding two other interviews with the improved codebook, it was discussed with the research team. After that, hardly any adjustments were deemed necessary. Subsequently, the principal researcher coded the remaining interviews, and revised—with the final codebook—the previously-coded interviews (see Table 5 in the Appendix). To interpret the relations between PLE and PSLE, the relations between attributes were put into diagrams that summarise the main relationships as experienced by the interviewees. For each interview, an overview was made of these relationships and corresponding typical quotes, categorised for each aspect of the PLE’s subdimension Individualisation. A cross-case analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994) established the relationships which were most frequently identified as being important.

The interviewees associate PLE fitness with the availability and capacity of physical facilities, experienced as preconditional for conducting the learning activities (teaching repertoire, learning diversity). According to the interviewees, the capacity of the floor space determines how many students can be accommodated in a particular pedagogical setting, with presentation settings requiring the least space and collaborative settings needing the most space:

I’ve had someone presenting here once and it was completely packed with 120 people, crammed like sardines, but it fitted. When applying a collaborative setting with several groups, then with 25–30 people, we reach the max. of what fits.

Regarding collaborative settings, both teachers and students mentioned that knowledge sharing and knowledge construction is strongly enhanced by the availability of writable surfaces and displays.

Regarding their personal workplace, students mentioned the table surface’s capacity for the disposition of materials and equipment, and the capacity of power supplies for their devices. Students also note that poor chair ergonomics causes physical discomfort, hindering their attentiveness and focus. The quality of the chair is also perceived by them as a sign of respect and inclusiveness. Teachers agree with this, as one said:

Everyone sits on the same chair, comfortable and adjustable to one’s characteristics. Not only our educational but also our physical environment has to be designed according to the principle that every student is unique.

The interviewees also associate PLE fitness with visibility, intelligibility, and the PLE’s ergonomics, together with the positioning of participants, constituting the PLE’s congruency with the pedagogical setting. They experience that these sub-aspects influence students’ and teachers’ behaviour (teacher’s approachability, receptiveness/supportiveness; students’ attentiveness, focus, participation, initiative). The interviewees note that physical encounters are crucial to establishing and maintaining relationships within the learning community. According to them, this has to do with the multi-layered communication in a PLE, with fluently changing communication settings involving formal and informal communication, intended and unintentional:

You cannot ‘not communicate’ in a physical environment, such as you can in virtual meeting: turn off the webcam and mic. Seeing is essential, but actually feeling is much more important.

Interviewees associate visibility with participants’ view direction, influencing students’ involvement. Students and teachers mention that, in traditional furniture arrangements, visual interactions between participants are limited, stimulating passive audience behaviour:

In open learning spaces, it is much easier to cooperate than in a traditional classroom with a bus arrangement. Then you are actually working individually and listening to one person.

In contrast, students and teachers experience that concentric arrangements, without any physical separation between the participants, lead to more interaction. As a teacher said:

For social interaction, we position students in a circular arrangement without tables in front of them, forcing them to be open to each other. Sitting behind a table makes them immediately more reserved.

The interviewees indicate that the relative physical positioning—regarding height difference, distance and the like—also influences the psychosocial positions, which can be reinforced by the furnishing, such as tables’ form and seating arrangement that indicate positions and roles of participants:

I take a central position at a rectangular table’s short side when I have to lead the discussion. With square or round tables there is always someone sitting next to you, in an equal position.

In addition, the interviewees perceive that the type of seating influences the sitting posture and thus behaviour. With informal seating, people sit back, associated with a relaxed posture that befits informal discussions and idea-forming. With formal seating, people sit upright, associated with an alert attitude, as befits formal discussions and presentations for which attention and active participation are expected. Regarding the furniture arrangement, the teachers mention that the furniture arrangement’s ‘congruency’ with the intended behaviour is more important than in traditional pedagogies. They perceive that, unlike traditional pedagogy, innovative pedagogy requires psychosocial interaction as one of the most-important elements and that physical positioning has impact on those psychosocial interactions:

If you have a lecture, the type of furniture arrangement is actually not that relevant. But if you want to observe how the students actually collaborate, or with what attitude they tackle an assignment, then you definitely need an innovative arrangement.

Several interviewees noted that not every teacher is equally spatially competent (teacher’s pedagogical repertoire’s diversity) to assess furniture arrangement’s congruency with the pedagogical setting:

I think recognising the correct furniture composition requires training. Since I switched to innovative pedagogy, I apply ‘the art of hosting’. I consciously choose the arrangement that optimally supports my setting. However, some colleagues have less affinity with this.

A team leader notes that, with the realisation of the innovative PSLE-PLE, the process does not stop because innovation involves a continuous process of exchanging thoughts and experience:

That is always with innovations, a few people get to work enthusiastically and the rest a little less. I noticed that thinking about space and education is more than conveying a certain concept; it has more the nature of a conversation.

Teachers also underline the importance of team dialogue for the pedagogical practice (team’s reflectiveness), but also for designing an appropriate PLE. They note that the implemented pedagogical repertoire is determined by the teaching team’s learning goal orientation and that therefore that a PLE that fits well with one team does not necessarily have to fit well with other teams with different learning orientations. They also note that discussing the PLE's design deepened their discussions on pedagogy:

This is the most valuable thing that the design of the physical learning environment has brought us: thinking about and discussing how we design and organise our education: from the basics, what you stand for, and which learning environment suits that best, educationally and physically. If you advocate a different pedagogy, then you may need completely different physical configurations.

In the cases when the users have been strongly involved, a good fit is experienced between the PLE and PSLE. When the users have been less involved, or not involved at all, teachers are significantly less positive about PLE’s fitness:

It has been thought for us—with the best of intentions—by others, not with us. They have come up with all sorts of things and forgot to ask us. As a result, things have been built that don't work well at all. Because things can’t be changed anymore, we adapt to the space and not the other way around.

There are contrary experiences in the cases for which users are empowered to (re-) design and adjust the space. Here, knowledge is constantly being developed about what works and what doesn't, as a member of team F said:

We are always trying something new to support the educational activities. We also often ask students to come up with solutions. Sometimes it fails, sometimes you solve something. We learn from that. I am proud of what we have achieved here. Only you should never stop developing. There is still much to gain…

The interviewees associate PLE flexibility with the diversity and rearrange-ability of PLE elements—ranging from the scale of a learning cluster to the scale of pieces of furniture in a space—indicating that this supports the diversity of pedagogical settings (teaching repertoire’s diversity, learning diversity) as well as the ability to switch quickly between pedagogical settings (pedagogical agility). According to the interviewees, PLE diversity can be realised by combining a diversity of spaces within a learning cluster, or through a diversity of furniture and furniture arrangements within one space. As a student from case D said:

The classrooms and the study landscape have a separate function for me. When I’m in the classroom, I’m there because then I have lessons; teacher-guided activities. When I’m in the study landscape, furnished with individual desks, I’m there to work on my assignments. We use the informal seating for discussing or just chatting.

Furniture arrangement diversity within one space enables switching directly between different settings as a teacher from case C said:

In the default position, you can work dynamically, using the furniture arrangements’ diversity. You can respond quickly to students’ learning needs. Above a certain number of students, you have to adjust, limiting and losing furniture arrangements’ diversity. We prefer to avoid that, because then you may lose the pedagogically dynamic quality of the space. In those cases, we propose to split into two sessions. Nevertheless, it is convenient that I can rearrange the furniture during the day, to fit the changing learning activities. I regularly do that, but I always return it to the default position because that’s the best.

Although the users say that they consider the rearrange-ability of the furniture arrangement important, they do not rearrange quickly. A number of factors are mentioned, including the floor area’s fitness, furniture’s moveability/ change convenience and the team’s spatial competency.

Not all learning settings can be realised in the same space for the same number of students. In many interviews, the interviewees mentioned that, after a plenary start in a presentation setting, students split up into groups for elaboration in a discussion setting or a collaborative setting. Then, groups often leave because group settings require more space.

When alternative spaces are not available, the PLE’s change convenience determines whether its rearrange-ability is actually used. The interviewees link the PLE’s change convenience to the movability and stackability of furniture. Because of their weight, large furniture and walls are experienced as an obstacle to rearrangement:

You can use those wall elements to create spatial units for group work. We don't apply that much because it is a lot of hassle to move those things. They are quite heavy. If moving was really easy, we would use it more often.

Change convenience is even more decisive in cases for which teachers need to return the furniture to its original configuration after a short period of use.

Sometimes we try to change the furniture arrangement, but you often have to put everything back because another group is using that space after you. Then we don't do that because it will be at the expense of the time you want to spend on your session

For the sake of efficiency, teachers therefore do not rearrange the furniture arrangement, but rather adjust their pedagogical setting.

Where teams use a flexible PLE together, teachers underline the importance of mutual conversation and coordination, including rule clarity regarding rearranging the furniture (furniture arrangement rearrange-ability).

Teachers note that, through the joint use of spaces with a flexible layout, they become more aware of the differences within the team regarding their pedagogical preferences and competencies, including the ability to adapt to the new PLE:

From the traditional learning environment in which everything was structured and predictable, you enter a flexible environment in which you are inquisitive. New environments require an investigative and self-regulating ability—from the student, but also from the teacher and the team.

Teachers indicate that they learn in the pedagogical practice of how to use the PLE’s flexibility effectively, as a teacher and as a team, and that mutual discussions help them to strengthen their spatial competencies:

Because of the flexibility of the furniture arrangement, you get informative discussions with your colleagues about what works and what doesn’t.

In case C, the team developed rules regarding the default position in which the furniture must be replaced after use. Here, the interviewees emphasise that everyone then must adhere to the agreements, requiring a culture of rule clarity and conformity:

We address students and teachers about the use of the space. There are house rules. We point these out if they are not being followed.

However, if this culture is lacking, the PLE’s flexibility can frustrate users because they often have to rearrange the furniture from an unpredictable arrangement:

Everyone organises the furniture arrangement differently. That gives you a lot of freedom but also frustration, because when you get there, it’s never the way you want it to be.

In the cases A and B, students have a say over the PLE. Here, students emphasise the importance of mutual coordination and discussions also. They experience that without coordination a competitive atmosphere arises, If coordination does function well, they experience that this strengthens the group cohesiveness :

We made agreements among ourselves. If the agreements did not work, we adjusted them in consultation. If someone had a problem, we helped each other. At another course, agreements we made were nailed down for the entire period. There, each group claimed their own space; everyone was focused only on his own group.

The interviewees associate PLE connection with the proximity of people in the different work/learning spaces, expressed in acoustical, visual and physical connections, indicating that this affects the interactions between users and thus their relationships.

The interviewees emphasise the importance of having a fixed area—in which students’ and teachers’ workplaces are interconnected—for fostering mutual support, cooperation and social bonding (cohesiveness). In this area, community members can meet, whether planned or unplanned, formally or informally. If students have questions, they can find their peers and teachers there. The interviewees underline the importance of the teacher's workplace proximity to the students’ workplaces in their learning landscape or ‘learning common’. In all the cases studied, teachers work in the learning common or in a space directly adjacent to it. Students also mention the benefits of getting peer support in their learning common:

The learning common is the home of the study program. If you are bothered by something, you can quickly share with others and discuss it.

Students experience that the openness of the learning common supports peer learning (student cooperation):

In an open space it is very easy to talk to each other. When I discuss things, then I analyse things, adding knowledge, generating new ideas. The learning process goes much faster, because you learn from each other.

Students and teachers mention that the informal meeting place—next to the learning common where everybody walks by—promotes unplanned contact moments. According to them, these informal moments, discussing personal issues and learning issues, promote feelings of cohesiveness and stimulate the learning process. As a teacher said:

It is important to have our community spaces located together: the corridor, the hangout, the study landscape and the teaching space. For me, the best conversations and the best education take place outside the official lessons and learning spaces.

The students mentioned the importance of an informal space for social bonding also:

We were not only seriously busy there, but also having a cup of coffee, playing games. It's those little moments that make you bond with each other, stimulate you to get started, stimulate you to agree to do things together.

Although interviewees mention that connections between learning places also can be disruptive for activities requiring focus, students mention that the openness of the space is much less of a problem if the users take each other into account. As this student said:

There are no specific separations and yet the space is used enormously varied. I think it works because people do respect each other.

In addition, students also note that the level of distraction varies from person to person. Some seek out the bustle of their peers to work on their studies, while others just need silence. When working individually, students mostly use earplugs if they experience insufficient acoustical separation. Some students indicate that visual separations help them to avoid being visually distracted (e.g. sitting with their back to the others or by shielding their work place with screens).

Collaborative and discussion settings are mentioned as being most sensitive to disturbance. The interviewees indicate that this is caused by the reduced intelligibility of group members but also by distraction because of conversations conducted in the vicinity. Because of this disturbance sensitivity, groups often leave the space to find an acoustically-separated space within or outside their learning cluster for these collaborative activities.

The interviewed teachers do not experience any problems with students working outside their supervision. According to them, students have to be self-regulating and don’t need teachers’ control. Students are free to choose the place that they consider most suitable for their activities. Connections between teachers’ own workplace and those of their students are not considered very important. Moreover, educational benefits of working outside the own learning cluster (student workplace’s disjunction) were mentioned, such as stimulating environmental interaction with other study programs. As this teacher said:

We encourage students to use the spaces and facilities of the other study programs. If they get stuck, they can help each other from their own expertise.

Pedagogical emphasis on interaction appears to overcome lacking spatial connections. Even in case B, for which spaces are strongly separated, there are many interactions between the different users in the building, as one teacher said:

Making connections must be in the minds of people, then spatial separations don’t matter anymore.

According to team leaders, the position of the learning cluster can also promote or hinder environmental interaction. Team C experiences that the disjunction of their space from the building’s main routes hampers interaction. They say that spatial connections with a route can stimulate encounters and interaction with people, through chance encounters or by generating interest through displayed activities and projects. Whereas team C, which is focused on interaction with other study programs, prefers a location on the main route within the building, team B, which is focused on interactions with companies, prefers a location outside the campus. Their students experience that the location in the multicompany-building in the inner city promotes interaction with external stakeholders of the projects on which they are working:

On the university campus you are all in one secluded place, disconnected from society. What I really like here is that, if you want to do research, you can easily walk into the city and find people.

According to teams B and D, working off-campus is especially beneficial for senior students in their transition from education to professional practice. For younger students, having their own place at the campus is more important for building a social bond with peers and teachers who can support them in their studies.

The interviewees mainly associate personalisation with the customisability of a certain space or learning cluster, indicating that this affects students’ feelings of ownership and affiliation, which in turn stimulates students’ motivation. Teachers emphasise that, for fostering the sense of a community among learners, the learning common should be experienced as a home, and that domestic elements contribute to a homely atmosphere. Students confirm that domestic furnishings evoke their sense of community:

It feels like a safe place where I belong. I think the kitchen is important for that, but also those other domestic elements that make you feel at home and behave as you would do at home. Because everyone behaves that way, they feel like my family to me.

Teachers have different opinions regarding the PLE’s distinctiveness and whether this should be determined by the staff, the team or by the students. Team E has furnished their learning space distinctively and profession-specifically, because they experience that this evokes profession-specific behaviour:

For practical simulations, we prepare case studies and arrange the space in such a way that it closely resembles practice with everything that goes with it. Then that space supports professional behaviour. This style is characteristic for our profession, making our PLE distinctive.

However, such specific furnishing by the team can also hinder the students’ sense of ownership, as a student from case E said:

The design is a bit over the top. It doesn’t really feel my ‘own’, it feels even emptier and more clinical than it used to be when it was still a normal classroom, decorated by ourselves.

Therefore, teams of the cases A, B, and F encourage their students to furnish the PLE themselves, because they have experienced that this contributes to a group’s cohesion and student engagement. Students experience this also:

We arranged and maintained the space ourselves, in mutual consultation. By doing so, the entire space becomes your own environment. We have placed domestic elements such as a sofa, a rug, table lamps, plants. Doesn’t feel like being at school. Sitting on the couch with your friends, building a bond you would never have had in a classroom. That stimulates me to pursue my studies.

According to the teams, developing feelings of ownership is only possible if the users have shared control over their PLE by not only having a say about their furnishing, but also about their PLE’s use. A student said:

It felt like our own space when we furnished it ourselves with benches and a cupboard. But then other groups were also scheduled there, and I was not welcome at that moment. After that, it no longer felt proper and safe, not being our own, anymore.

For students, personalisation has more to do with being trusted and sharing control over the PLE, than with distinctive features or style:

For me, personalisation is not so much about exhibiting my own projects, but more about the respect and trust you get and the free use of the spaces and facilities.

However, students’ empowerment and the PSLE-PLE’s scale seem to be related. A teacher of case D noted that self-management did not appear feasible anymore after the enlargement of their learning cluster, with more groups using that PLE.

The necessity of the availability and capacity of PLE elements mentioned by the interviewees corresponds to the spatial requirements as formulated by Fisher (2005). The interviewees’ perceptions also support the assumption that furniture arrangements influence users’ behaviour and thus the pedagogical setting (Scott-Webber, 2004). The interviewees noted that the experience of fitness of arrangements strongly depends on the teams’ implemented pedagogy. They mentioned the innovative pedagogies being most vulnerable. This observation takes on additional meaning because it is based on the experiences of the teachers and students during the period when the Covid measures limited the interactions to virtual contacts. Both students and teachers experience that a virtual environment reasonably supports singular interactions, such as in the presentation setting and the one-on-one setting. But, according to them, this does not apply to the interactive settings that are characteristic of innovative pedagogy. Because of the lack of a physical learning environment, they felt severely limited in their innovative pedagogy. This underlines the importance of the PLE for—and its alignment with—innovative educational practices.

Alignment about the intended use of the PLE—as intended by the user and as foreseen by the designer—appears essential for the experienced PLE's fitness for users' pedagogical practice (Daniels et al., 2019; Lippman, 2010). The current study suggests that the degree of involvement in the design correlates with the experienced fitness. Similar to Woodman's (2016) observations on empowering users in the design, the current study shows that those who co-designed their PLE feel spatially engaged and eager to share their knowledge regarding the pedagogical use of the new PLE with others. Thus, the space might not be a change agent as such, but the users involved in changing the space are the true agents of innovation, which seems to be overlooked by policymakers.

All interviewees were eager to acquire and share knowledge and their experiences, positive and negative alike. Because students determine their own learning space for most of the time, they discuss the fitness of places for their common learning activities almost daily. Based on their experiences, they take into account the nature of the activities and the personal differences. The interviewed students showed ‘spatial competency’, which is consistent with Woodman’s (2016) observation that students who are allowed to self-regulate their PLE show more spatial competency and engagement. Teachers also mention that discussions with their colleagues contribute significantly to their understanding of the PSLE-PLE relationship. Additionally, they mentioned the added value of training and expert advice on demand. This underlines the importance of preparing teachers to use innovative PLEs (Byers et al., 2018b), but also the importance of stimulating teachers’ and teams’ continuous reflectiveness (Bradbeer et al., 2019).

The perceptions of the interviewees regarding PLE flexibility are in line with earlier research indicating that teachers and students associate PLE flexibility primarily with diversity—either in the same space, or by moving to another space (Woodman, 2016). They perceive that the PLE’s diversity contributes to teachers’ pedagogical diversity and students’ learning diversity (Byers, et al., 2018a, 2018b). PLE’s rearrange-ability is hardly used. This study indicates that students’ preference could be explained by their estimation of the effort and time needed to change, weighted against the time for which the changed PLE will be used and its estimated impact on the learning. That might also explain why users sometimes prefer to adapt their learning or teaching to the PLE, rather than using the PLE’s flexibility for adapting the PLE to their PSLE.

Empowering users to adapt their PLE to their educational needs might solve this hindrance. In line with observations in earlier research, the interviewees mentioned that, if users are empowered to adapt their PLE, good coordination is needed (Kariippanon et al., 2018; Saltmarsh et al., 2015). The interviewees’ experiences indicate that, in those cases for which the PLE’s maintenance and change are organised clearly, the PLE’s flexibility functions the best. The current study shows different ways of organisation: by mutual agreements about the return to an optimal standard furniture arrangement, by appointing one team member who manages the furniture arrangement and advises users, or by procedural agreements on mutual coordination. In the cases of perceived inadequate coordination or non-compliance with the rules, PLE flexibility frustrates users and therefore users even avoid that PLE, indicating that rule clarity and conformity regarding the use and re-arranging of the PLE is of the utmost importance.

The interviewees emphasised the interconnectedness of the workplaces for teachers and those for students, and a meeting place for informal activities, which together constitute the ‘home base’ for reinforcing group cohesion (Woodman, 2016). The cases included in this study show that—depending on the PSLE’s organisation—this home base can have the scale of one space used by one student group, up to the scale of a spatial cluster used by a number of groups forming a learning community.

The interviewees mentioned that the PLE’s openness stimulates teacher support and student cooperation, as observed by Byers et al. (2018b). However, openness can become an Achilles’ heel if the PSLE’s organisation does not take into account the limitations of visual and audial connections. Interviewees mentioned coordination of activities and a culture of mutual respect and supportiveness as being crucial for open PLEs, which confirms observations of research on open PLEs at other education levels (e.g. Kariippanon et al., 2018).

In most cases, the spaces of the clusters are physically separated from each other with non-convertible walls. Contrary to the assumptions of Dovey and Fisher (2014) regarding the openness or convertibility of separations between learning spaces, the interviewed teachers don’t experience the walls as limitations to the flow of people and activities to other spaces within the cluster. These findings add nuance to the assumptions regarding the necessity of spatial connections between all learning spaces within a cluster, as incorporated in the innovative spatial models of the conceptual literature.

The student experiences as recorded in this current study are in line with Woodman's (2016) conclusion that students' ability to organise and control the space themselves contributes to their ownership of the learning environment, social cohesion and thus their study motivation. The current study indicates that this also applies to teachers. For both students and teachers, the empowerment to personalise and manage their own space contributes to their engagement, motivation and satisfaction.

The current study also shows that violation of this empowerment is perceived by both students and teachers as devastating for their feelings of ownership. Personalisation and ownership seem to be inextricably linked. However, self-management is bound to scale. This study indicates that the scale of the space—and thus the size of the group that owns that space—entails different scales of personalisation. With a small space and a small group, the space can be used, managed, and personalised by one group, which creates a strong bond. However, if the cluster and number of users is larger, and the same spaces are used by multiple groups, frictions arise if one group psychosocially claims a space through personalisation. Personalisation appears to be connected to the ownership of the total community of teachers and students who use that particular PLE. The larger the community is, the larger is the PLE, and the more impersonal the personalised elements tend to be.

Research regularly shows that teachers have difficulties finding a new balance between stimulating students’ self-regulation and teachers’ supervision (Woodman, 2016). This would explain teachers' preference for an area of clustered spaces, which provides an overview of all student activities (Dovey & Fisher, 2014). However, as our study reveals, teaching teams who put students’ self-regulation central do not have the need for supervision. A reversal of findability and visibility manifests itself: teachers must be findable and approachable for students who have learning questions. The conclusion might be drawn that students’ self-regulation or pedagogical empowerment consequently leads to spatial empowerment of students, which sheds a new light on the innovative spatial models of the conceptual literature.

The current study underlines the importance of assigning and attuning control over the PLE between the policy level—of managers and supporting staff—and the operational level of the teams. The users regularly mentioned the frictions that arise when adjustments are required at a level of policy and management, which is beyond their sphere of influence. Where coordination and agreements within a learning community about the use of PLE by others are overruled by the central planning or facility management, users feel less connected with that PLE, which makes them feel less stimulated to use the PLE optimally (Cleveland, 2016).

This study also underlines the importance of involving users in the design of their PLE. As Daniels et al. (2019) argue, if policy makers do not involve users in the discussion about the design, architects do not become aware of the experiences and preferences of the users, and users are unfamiliar with the intended use as assumed by the designers. This can result in dysfunctional environments. Conversely, when users are closely involved in the design—or constantly redesign the environment themselves—they feel stimulated to contribute to the discourse regarding the PSLE, the PLE, and the mutual relationship between the two. Our research indicates that, by empowering users in the design process, interventions can be less invasive, resistances to processes can be reduced, and the PSLE-PLE will be used more effectively. Empowered users appear to be motivated to actively contribute to the discourse on the PSLE-PLE relationship, including conceiving, sharing, implementing, and evaluating innovations of their PSLE-PLE, not only during the design phase but also during implementation. Through continued involvement and empowerment of users, the PLE’s fitness can be ensured sustainably.