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‘The science of designing learning environments is currently remarkably under-developed’, argued architect and CABE Commissioner Emeritus the late Richard Feilden in 2004. In a similar vein, Professor Stephen Heppell argued at the expert seminar held to inform this literature review that ‘whereas, traditionally, we have designed for productivity, processing large numbers of children through the effective use of buildings, designing a room for learning is very complex. No one knows how to prevent ‘learning-loss’ when you design a room “pedagogically”, whereas we know lots about designing for minimum heat loss’.

The first thing that will strike you as you read this literature review is the relative paucity of research on effective learning environments. Not only is the evidence incomplete, particularly in areas such as the systems and processes and communications approaches that schools need to underpin their physical environment, but the research that has been done seems to be largely predicated on a traditional view of ‘chalk and talk’learning in standardised ‘one size fits all’institutions.