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Learning Environment

Learning environment refers to any location or context where learning takes place, including both formal classrooms and informal settings like outdoor areas. It encompasses both the physical space and culture of a school, including how students and teachers interact and the ways classrooms are organized to facilitate learning. A learning environment is determined by many factors and can influence student engagement, motivation, well-being, and safety. Educators aim to develop total learning environments by considering learner characteristics, teaching goals, learning activities, assessment strategies, and culture.

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123 views

Learning Environment

Learning environment refers to any location or context where learning takes place, including both formal classrooms and informal settings like outdoor areas. It encompasses both the physical space and culture of a school, including how students and teachers interact and the ways classrooms are organized to facilitate learning. A learning environment is determined by many factors and can influence student engagement, motivation, well-being, and safety. Educators aim to develop total learning environments by considering learner characteristics, teaching goals, learning activities, assessment strategies, and culture.

Uploaded by

Baby Panda
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Learning environment

Learning environment refers to the diverse physical locations, contexts, and cultures in which students
learn. Since students may learn in a wide variety of settings, such as outside-of-school locations and
outdoor environments, the term is often used as a more accurate or preferred alternative to classroom,
which has more limited and traditional connotations—a room with rows of desks and a chalkboard, for
example.

The term also encompasses the culture of a school or class—its presiding ethos and characteristics,
including how individuals interact with and treat one another—as well as the ways in which teachers
may organize an educational setting to facilitate learning—e.g., by conducting classes in relevant natural
ecosystems, grouping desks in specific ways, decorating the walls with learning materials, or utilizing
audio, visual, and digital technologies. And because the qualities and characteristics of a learning
environment are determined by a wide variety of factors, school policies, governance structures, and
other features may also be considered elements of a “learning environment.”

Educators may also argue that learning environments have both a direct and indirect influence on
student learning, including their engagement in what is being taught, their motivation to learn, and their
sense of well-being, belonging, and personal safety. For example, learning environments filled with
sunlight and stimulating educational materials would likely be considered more conducive to learning
than drab spaces without windows or decoration, as would schools with fewer incidences of
misbehavior, disorder, bullying, and illegal activity. How adults interact with students and how students
interact with one another may also be considered aspects of a learning environment, and phrases such
as “positive learning environment” or “negative learning environment” are commonly used in reference
to the social and emotional dimensions of a school or class.

Developing a total learning environment for students in a particular course or program is probably the
most creative part of teaching. While there is a tendency to focus on either
physical institutional learning environments (such as classrooms, lecture theatres and labs), or on the
technologies used to to create online personal learning environments (PLEs), learning environments are
broader than just these physical components. They will also include:

the characteristics of the learners;

the goals for teaching and learning;

the activities that will best support learning;

the assessment strategies that will best measure and drive learning

the culture that infuses the learning environment

Lastly, I have deliberately suggested a learning environment from the perspective of a teacher, as the
teacher has the main responsibility for creating an appropriate learning environment, but it is also
important to consider learning environments from the learners’ perspectives. Indeed, adult or mature
learners are capable of creating their own, personal, relatively autonomous learning environments.

The significant point is that it is important to identify those components that need to be considered in
teaching a course or program, and in particular that there are other components besides content or
curriculum.  Each of the key components of the learning environment I have chosen as an example are
discussed briefly in the following sections, with a focus on the components of a learning environment
that are particularly relevant for a digital age.

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