Ideas about the future of education have, over the past two to three decades, centred on the need for new ways of learning that are argued to prepare young people more effectively for less predictable, digital futures (EC, 2022; OECD, 2020; Leat et al., 2012).  New curricula based on competences rather than only on knowledge are evident in a number of European countries and are supported by international organisations (Leat et al., 2012; OECD, 2020).   Connected to these ideas about ‘21^st century learning’, there are necessarily implications for teachers’ practices and learners’ activities (Grannäs and Stavem, 2021).  These proposed changes to learning and teaching come together in calls for Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs), understood as forms of educational practice resulting from flexible, versatile school design together with the adoption of diverse styles of learning that recognise and assume more student autonomy (Cardellino & Deed, 2024; TKI, 2019).  Such school designs offer opportunities for teachers, perhaps working collaboratively with colleagues or no longer ‘being “tied” to one set of students’ (Deed and Lesko, 2015: 227) but also challenges (Campbell et al., 2013).

The literature of educational change and top-down reform makes abundantly clear the need for genuine participation by educators in any attempted change process (Fullan, 2007; Ouston et al., 1991; Priestley et al., 2011). To support and guide such involvement in changes to school space, and so enable the alignment of new spaces with new practices, the Constructing Education Framework was developed (Duthilleul et al., 2021; Woolner & Duthilleul, 2022) by the Council of Europe Development Bank. Their concern centred on the wasted investment of building new schools that school communities do not then use effectively, a concern that has also been discussed in relation to building ILEs in Australian schools (French et al., 2019).

A three-year study (2020-2023) to examine the relevance and viability of the Constructing Education Framework was undertaken with the cooperation of the cities of Järvenpää and Espoo in Finland and the municipality of Milan in Italy (Duthilleul et al., 2024).  In these two contrasting European countries, city officials and school principals helped us test the overall conceptualisation and proposed process of the Framework, in the context of new and refurbished schools that included some elements of open, flexible spaces.  They reflected on activities already undertaken in their contexts, and implemented new activities as proposed by the Framework. 

Although a range of conclusions can be drawn from this trialling, including an estimation of the financial costs of participatory activities during the change process, the focus of this paper is on the involvement of teachers.  Specifically, we consider the possibilities, and indeed challenges, of supporting teacher professional learning through the process of changing physical school space, since the need for professional development in such circumstances has previously been highlighted (Campbell et al., 2013; Morrison & Kedian, 2017).

Two differently sized municipalities in Finland, Espoo and Järvenpää, and the municipality of Milan, in Italy, identified a sample of two schools per city that were at different stages of processes of rebuilding or refurbishment. In each case, but to differing extents, the new school spaces included some elements of open and flexible design, such as openable walls between classrooms, easily moveable furniture, or unenclosed teaching or activity areas. Municipal officials engaged with CEB and EIB, who were funding the school building work, in a three-year study of existing planning, preparatory and post-occupancy evaluation practices, considering how these were aligned or could be enhanced to implement the practices proposed by the Constructing Education Framework. The over-arching aim of the study was to follow up the construction process of the selected schools and consider the experiences and opinions of the different stakeholders involved in the process (officials, school principals and teachers). Two facilitators, one educator and one architect, were assigned to each participating municipality. One of the experts was based locally and so had understanding of the educational context of the participating country. At least three remote meetings were held every year with the different participants. Research visits to the participating schools were conducted, but these were considerably more in-depth in Finland, where all four schools were visited and observed in operation and interviews were conducted with the principals and some teachers. It has been argued that the professional learning that is most needed in relation to school space is the development of shared, professional knowledge of the affordances of new, especially innovative, settings and resources (Young and Cleveland, 2022). The Framework argues that the construction period provides time for such professional learning by school staff ‘getting ready’ (this is phase 2 of the Framework) for new spaces. Professional development and staff preparation at this stage has also been found in other studies to ease transition into innovative school spaces (Cardellino & Deed, 2022; Cardellino & Woolner, 2020; Daniels & Tse, 2018). This study did find some useful activities taking place during this stage, but it also revealed some challenges to this proposed process, including occasions where the staff for the new school was not yet appointed or had significantly changed. For various reasons, in practice, the ‘getting ready’ phase was carried once the new school building became operational, at the phase that the Framework had identified as phase 3, ‘Moving-in’.

It became evident that underlying the deficiencies in professional development opportunities was that the need for systematic support had not been foreseen by education officials at the municipal level to help school staff ‘get ready’ educationally and professionally. This was the case even in Finland where the involvement of school staff at the design stage to ensure a pedagogic aspect to the plan is entirely routine. Where professional development initiatives did take place they were, in Finland, organised by the school principal, usually funded from the school budget or sometimes making use of other professional development opportunities that could be adapted to focus on the use and design of school space. In Milan, professional learning was enabled through a single action research project led by the municipality in collaboration from the local University. These various, rather ad-hoc, initiatives all demonstrated, perhaps unsurprisingly, the significant amount of time needed to support effective professional pedagogical learning and also to plan new organisational aspects such as student grouping or timetabling. These findings concur with a developing body of research making clear the need for adequate time and support for professional learning when transitioning into new, particularly more flexible and open, school spaces (Cardellino & Deed, 2022; French et al., 2019; Morrison & Kedian, 2017; Campbell et al., 2013). What this study adds are particular details about how this need is currently addressed, or not, in two differing European countries. Within this are suggestions for initiatives at municipal or school level that might indeed be implemented differently across the diverse school systems of Europe, but which need to happen somehow to support professional learning in relation to educational space.

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