Learning environments and innovative practice

This chapter reiterates the “learning principles” from the learning research phase of the ILE project and how they should guide the design of all learning environments. The chapter reviews insights from both the school effectiveness and school improvement traditions: it observes both consistency of ILE work with important findings from these traditions and some problems they give rise to. Extending the focus more directly on learning, rather than schooling, two additional framing concepts are considered: “learning approach” and “learning environment”. The chapter reviews two sets of learning approaches – those associated with alternative schooling and those described as “research-based innovation” – and outlines why “learning environment” is the main framing concept for this study. It gives the basic OECD/ILE formulation of “learning environment”, to be built on in terms of environments that are particularly innovative, powerful and effective. The chapter ends with a discussion of innovation as exemplified in the project cases.