Leading research linked with industry and government to improve learning environments

The built environment critically impacts teachers and students of all abilities in early years education, schools, universities, vocational training and professional development.

Since 2009, the Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN) has brought together international experts from diverse disciplines and sectors to investigate, imagine and improve physical learning environments.

For more than a decade our LEaRN group has been researching how to design and use school spaces to improve teachers’ practices and students’ learning.

It’s been a sustained and evidence-based agenda of research. It’s covered school designs of the future, sustainable school design, evaluation of learning spaces, teacher transition into new learning spaces, the development of schools as community hubs; and most recently, a new project on designing schools for students with disabilities.

These top-level Australian Research Council grants have been hugely successful collaborations between our LEaRN team and partnering industries. Added to these has been commissioned research across a wide variety of school design and use topics.