A foundational perspective on how research-informed design can create learning environments that support student engagement, well-being, and performance.
The Future of Learning Begins with the Learner
Learning is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Every student enters the classroom with a unique combination of abilities, experiences, needs, and ways of engaging with the world. As education evolves to better recognize these differences, the environments where learning takes place must evolve alongside it.
Today’s learning environments are being asked to do more than ever before. They must support independent thinking and collaborative problem-solving, encourage creativity and exploration, accommodate different sensory and physical needs, and provide students with opportunities to connect with one another and their surroundings.
Yet many classrooms still reflect a traditional approach to education, with fixed seating arrangements, a single instructional focal point, and limited opportunities for movement or adaptation.
This disconnect raises an important question: If we are rethinking how students learn, shouldn’t we also rethink the spaces in which they learn?
The answer begins with recognizing that the physical environment is not simply a backdrop to education. It is part of the learning experience itself.
The ability to see and hear clearly, move comfortably, maintain focus, and feel connected to others can influence how students engage with instruction and participate in learning. When these fundamental needs are overlooked, the environment can introduce barriers that make learning more difficult.
When they are considered intentionally, design can help establish conditions that support student success.
The opportunity is to move beyond designing classrooms for what happens within them and begin designing learning environments around the people who experience them.
Understanding the Connection Between Environment and Learning
The relationship between physical environments and human cognition offers an important foundation for rethinking educational design.
Learning requires attention, information processing, memory, and the ability to make connections between new and existing knowledge. But these cognitive processes do not happen independently of the environments in which students find themselves.
Environmental distractions and discomfort can compete for the mental resources students need to engage with learning.
This relationship can be understood through the concept of cognitive load, which considers the demands placed on working memory as individuals process information.
Imagine a student attempting to follow a lesson in a classroom filled with competing conversations, excessive reverberation, or distracting noise from adjacent spaces. Another student may struggle to see instructional materials because of glare or poor sightlines. Others may experience physical discomfort from seating that does not accommodate their needs.
In each case, the student is navigating environmental challenges in addition to the learning task itself.
Research discussed in the 2024 EDspaces presentation, Performance Design Standards: Research-Informed Best Practices for Goal Achievement, highlights the importance of environmental conditions in supporting information processing and learning.
The implications extend beyond reducing distractions. They encourage designers and educators to consider how the physical environment can support attention, accessibility, comfort, and meaningful participation.
The goal is not simply to remove barriers to learning, but to create environments that better support the ways learning happens.
Designing for the Whole Learner: Five Fundamental Human Needs
A central premise of research-informed educational design is that learning environments must respond to fundamental human needs.
At the 2024 EDspaces conference, Dr. Lennie Scott-Webber, Dave Broz, and David Reid presented a performance-based framework focused on five essential environmental considerations: visual, audible, ergonomic, physiological, and belonging.
Together, these factors offer a more holistic understanding of how the built environment can support students.
1. Visual: Creating Clarity and Access to Learning
The ability to see clearly is fundamental to accessing information and participating in classroom activities.
Lighting quality, glare, sightlines, and the arrangement of instructional materials all influence how students interact with their learning environment.
In a traditional classroom, students positioned farther from a single instructional focal point may experience reduced visibility. Poorly controlled natural light or excessive glare can introduce additional challenges.
Thoughtful design considers how students access information from different positions and throughout different learning activities.
Appropriate lighting, clear sightlines, and adaptable spatial arrangements can help create more equitable opportunities for visual engagement.
The design opportunity is to move beyond simply illuminating a classroom toward ensuring that visual information is accessible, comfortable, and supportive of learning.
2. Audible: Supporting Communication and Concentration
Hearing is equally fundamental to the learning experience.
Classroom communication depends on the ability to distinguish instruction, participate in conversation, and understand information shared by educators and peers.
Yet educational environments often contain competing sound sources, from hallway activity and building systems to collaborative discussions and movement within the classroom.
Excessive background noise and reverberation can make communication more difficult, particularly for students with hearing differences, language-processing challenges, or other sensory needs.
Acoustic design can help address these challenges through appropriate sound absorption, control of noise transmission, and thoughtful spatial planning.
The objective is not to eliminate sound from learning environments. Collaboration, conversation, and interaction are essential components of education.
Instead, designers must consider how spaces can accommodate different sound conditions while maintaining speech clarity and opportunities for concentration.
3. Ergonomic: Supporting Movement, Comfort, and Choice
Learning is not a static activity, and students are not designed to remain in one position throughout the school day.
Different educational experiences require different physical interactions with the environment.
Students may need to sit and concentrate, stand and collaborate, move between activities, or engage in hands-on exploration.
Ergonomic design considers how furniture, spatial arrangements, and opportunities for movement support these varied activities.
Flexible furnishings and adaptable layouts can provide educators with more options for organizing instruction while giving students greater choice in how they engage with learning.
Choice is especially meaningful when it responds to genuine differences in physical comfort, sensory preferences, and learning activities.
A responsive environment recognizes that the physical needs of students may change throughout the day.
Rather than expecting every learner to adapt to a single classroom configuration, design can help create spaces that adapt to the people using them.
4. Physiological: Creating Conditions for Well-Being
Students experience learning through their entire bodies, not simply through cognitive processes.
Thermal comfort, indoor air quality, ventilation, and connections to nature contribute to the physical conditions in which learning takes place.
When classrooms are uncomfortable or poorly ventilated, students and educators may experience distractions or discomfort that interfere with their ability to participate fully.
Research-informed design encourages a more comprehensive approach to environmental quality, considering how building systems, materials, natural light, and interior elements work together.
Biophilic design, which incorporates connections to nature through natural materials, patterns, views, and other environmental features, offers another avenue for creating supportive learning spaces.
The objective is to consider the classroom as an interconnected environment rather than a collection of independent design elements.
Creating comfortable, healthy spaces is an important part of supporting the whole learner.
5. Belonging: Designing for Connection and Inclusion
Learning is also a social and emotional experience.
Students need opportunities to build relationships, participate in their communities, and feel that they have a place within the learning environment.
A sense of belonging can influence how students experience school and their willingness to participate, collaborate, and engage.
Physical environments can contribute to these experiences through spatial arrangements that encourage interaction, accessible learning resources, welcoming common areas, and opportunities for both group participation and individual reflection.
Design can also reflect the culture and identity of a school community through thoughtful choices in materials, color, graphics, and spatial organization.
Importantly, belonging is not created by design alone. It emerges through relationships, educational practices, and the broader school culture.
But the built environment can support these efforts by making connection, inclusion, and participation more accessible.
When students feel comfortable and connected to their surroundings, the environment can become a more supportive part of their educational experience.
From Traditional Classrooms to Responsive Learning Environments
For generations, classroom design has largely followed established conventions.
Rows of desks, a central teaching wall, and a fixed instructional orientation were developed around a particular understanding of how education should take place.
While this arrangement may support certain teaching activities, it does not necessarily accommodate the full range of learning experiences expected in modern education.
Today’s classrooms may transition between direct instruction, independent work, collaborative problem-solving, discussion, and creative exploration within a single day.
The physical environment must be able to respond to these changing demands.
This requires more than introducing movable furniture or creating visually engaging spaces.
It calls for an understanding of how students and educators use their environments and how design decisions can support different activities without compromising fundamental needs.
For example, an open collaborative space may encourage interaction but create acoustic challenges if sound is not appropriately managed. A highly flexible classroom may offer multiple configurations but become difficult to navigate if visual organization and circulation are not carefully considered.
Effective learning environments balance adaptability with clarity, comfort, and accessibility.
The goal is not flexibility for its own sake. It is purposeful flexibility that supports the educational experiences taking place.
Moving from Design Specifications to Learning Outcomes
One of the most significant opportunities in educational design is a shift in how success is defined.
Traditionally, design decisions have often been guided by established specifications, building codes, budgets, schedules, and familiar classroom configurations.
These considerations remain essential, but they do not necessarily answer a more important question: How well does the environment support the people who use it?
Performance-based design offers a different starting point.
Rather than focusing exclusively on what a classroom should contain, it begins by identifying what the environment should enable.
Can students see instructional materials clearly from different locations? Can they hear and understand educators and peers? Does the space provide appropriate physical comfort? Can it accommodate different activities and learning needs? Does it support opportunities for connection and participation?
These questions connect design decisions to the experiences they are intended to support.
A performance-based approach also encourages collaboration between architects, designers, educators, and school leaders to establish shared objectives early in the design process.
Those objectives can then inform material selections, spatial planning, building systems, and methods of evaluating how well the completed environment performs.
This represents an important evolution: moving from designing according to established conventions toward designing with clearly defined human outcomes in mind.
Every Design Decision Contributes to the Learning Experience
The built environment functions as an interconnected system.
Lighting influences visibility and comfort. Acoustics affect communication and concentration. Furniture and spatial arrangements shape movement and interaction. Materials contribute to environmental quality, sensory experience, and the overall character of a space.
These elements do not operate independently.
A thoughtful approach to educational design considers how they work together to create a cohesive learning environment.
Even elements that may traditionally be viewed as finishing decisions can contribute to this larger experience.
Flooring, for example, can help define activity zones, establish visual organization, support wayfinding, contribute to acoustic strategies, and create a cohesive sense of place. Material performance, maintenance, and long-term adaptability are also important considerations for educational facilities.
The significance of these decisions is not limited to the products themselves.
It is found in how those products contribute to environments that are easier to navigate, more comfortable to occupy, and better suited to the activities taking place within them.
This is where the opportunity for design extends beyond aesthetics and individual product performance.
It becomes about understanding the larger impact of the spaces we create.
Designing for Outcomes, Not Simply Occupancy
The future of educational design requires a more intentional connection between the physical environment and the goals of education.
This does not mean that design alone determines academic achievement. Student performance is influenced by many interconnected factors, including instruction, relationships, resources, individual needs, and the broader educational experience.
But the environment is one of the factors that schools and designers can intentionally shape.
By addressing fundamental human needs, reducing unnecessary environmental barriers, and creating spaces that support different learning experiences, design can contribute to the conditions in which students are better positioned to engage and succeed.
The next evolution in learning environments will not be defined solely by new technologies, innovative furniture, or changing classroom layouts.
It will be defined by a deeper understanding of the relationship between people, place, and performance.
As educators continue to reconsider how students learn, architects and designers have an opportunity to reconsider how learning environments respond.
The question is no longer simply what a classroom should look like.
It is what a learning environment should make possible.
And when we begin with that question, we open the door to designing spaces that create impact far beyond their physical boundaries.
Foundational source: Scott-Webber, L., Broz, D., & Reid, D. (2024). Performance Design Standards: Research-Informed Best Practices for Goal Achievement. EDspaces Conference.