📄 social_science

Preparing Pre-service Teachers to Teach with Physical Learning Environments: A Systematic Review

This systematic review of 32 studies reveals that while initial teacher education increasingly exposes pre-service teachers to innovative physical learning environments, it currently lacks robust, validated measures for assessing their spatial professional knowledge and often fails to move beyond simple exposure to include deliberate design, adaptation, and longitudinal performance-based evaluation.

Original authors: Andreu Curto-Reverte, Jordi Mogas

Published 2026-08-11

📖 7 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Andreu Curto-Reverte, Jordi Mogas

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine you are walking into a classroom. In the old days, these rooms looked like a movie theater: rows of desks all facing the front, like an audience waiting for a director to shout "Action!" But today, many schools are trying something different. They are building "innovative learning spaces." Think of these as the ultimate LEGO sets of education. Instead of fixed rows, you have movable walls, tables on wheels, cozy nooks, and high-tech gadgets scattered everywhere. Some are inside schools, some are in museums, and some are even out in the woods. The big idea is that if you change the room, you change how kids learn.

But here is the tricky part: just handing a teacher a room full of LEGO bricks doesn't mean they know how to build a castle. They might just build a pile of bricks. This is where the science of "teacher training" comes in. Before a new teacher can lead a class, they have to go through "pre-service" training, which is like a flight simulator for educators. The question scientists are asking is: Are we actually teaching these future teachers how to use these fancy, flexible rooms? Or are we just letting them sit in the simulator and hoping they figure it out? This paper dives into that exact mystery, looking at how we prepare the next generation of teachers to turn these cool, new physical spaces into places where real learning happens.

The Great Classroom Makeover: Are We Training Teachers to Use the New Rooms?

A team of researchers recently decided to take a deep dive into the world of teacher training. They wanted to know: When we send future teachers into these brand-new, flexible, high-tech, or outdoor learning environments, are we actually teaching them how to use them, or are we just hoping they pick it up by osmosis?

To find out, they acted like digital detectives. They scanned through thousands of research papers published between 2020 and July 2026, looking for studies about "pre-service teachers" (that's the fancy term for student teachers who haven't graduated yet). After filtering out the duplicates and the ones that didn't fit, they ended up with 32 studies to analyze. These studies looked at everything from reconfigured school classrooms to museums, makerspaces, and outdoor nature labs.

Here is what they found, broken down into three main discoveries.

1. The "Three Ways to Learn" in a Room

The researchers realized that when student teachers interact with these new spaces, it happens in three very different ways. They gave these three ways some catchy names:

Learning in Space: This is the most common scenario. It's like being a tourist. The student teacher walks into a cool, flexible classroom or a museum and just does their teaching practice there. They are participating, but they aren't necessarily thinking about why the room is set up that way. They are just using it as a backdrop.
Learning about Space: This is like being an architect or a critic. Here, the student teacher stops and analyzes the room. They ask, "Why is this table here? Does this lighting help or hurt? Is this space safe for everyone?" They are studying the room itself as a subject.
Learning to Teach with Space: This is the "Master Builder" level. It's when the teacher doesn't just use the room or study it, but actually designs it, adapts it on the fly, and evaluates if it worked. They decide, "I need to move this wall to help these students collaborate," and then they do it.

The Big Reveal: The study found that we are really good at the first type (Learning in space). Student teachers are getting plenty of chances to hang out in these cool new rooms. However, we are terrible at the third type (Learning to teach with space). Very few studies showed teachers being taught how to deliberately design, change, or judge these spaces. It's like giving a student a Ferrari and letting them drive it, but never teaching them how to tune the engine or change the oil.

2. The "Feel-Good" Trap

One of the most interesting findings was about how teachers feel versus how they actually perform.

When student teachers got to use these cool new spaces, they felt great! Their confidence went up. They felt more excited, more creative, and more sure of themselves. One study even saw their satisfaction scores jump from 60.9 to 84.0 after a fun, gamified session in a flexible classroom.

But here is the catch: Feeling confident doesn't mean you are actually good at the job. The researchers found that while teachers felt ready, there was almost no proof that they could actually do the hard work of adapting a space for a specific lesson. In fact, one study showed that 97.1% of participants thought they were doing great, but when they were tested on their actual performance, they were way overestimating their skills. It's the difference between thinking you can cook a gourmet meal because you watched a cooking show, and actually trying to cook it and burning the toast.

The paper suggests that while these new spaces make teachers feel good and build their identity, we aren't yet proving that they can independently figure out how to use these spaces to help different types of students learn.

3. The Missing Puzzle Pieces

The researchers also noticed that the training programs are a bit like a puzzle with missing pieces.

The "Tacit" Problem: A lot of the learning happens "tacitly," which means it happens by accident or by watching others, rather than through a clear lesson plan. A student teacher might figure out how to manage a flexible room just by being there, but if they move to a different school with a different room, they might not know what to do.
The "Design" Gap: Teachers are great at designing lessons (the content), but they are not great at designing the space (the container). They might plan a great science experiment, but they haven't been taught how to rearrange the furniture to make that experiment work best.
The "Critical" Gap: There is very little training on the "big picture" questions. For example, does this new room help everyone? Does it make some students feel left out? Does it give too much power to the teacher and too little to the students? The paper found that teachers rarely get trained to ask these critical questions about who gets to participate and who gets left behind.

The Bottom Line

So, what's the verdict? The paper concludes that while we are doing a great job of exposing future teachers to cool, new learning environments, we are failing to teach them the skills to master those environments.

We are currently in a phase where we are showing teachers the "LEGO set" and letting them play with it. But we aren't giving them the instruction manual on how to build something amazing with it, how to fix it when it breaks, or how to decide if it's the right set for the job. The authors suggest that teacher training needs to change. Instead of just "exposure," we need a clear path that takes teachers from just being in the room, to analyzing the room, to finally becoming the master builders who can shape the room to fit their students' needs.

Until then, we have a lot of teachers who feel confident in these new spaces, but we don't really know if they can actually make them work for every single student. The room is ready; the training, however, is still under construction.

Technical Summary: Preparing Pre-service Teachers to Teach with Physical Learning Environments

Problem Statement
Despite the proliferation of innovative physical learning spaces (e.g., Innovative Learning Environments, Flexible Learning Spaces, Future Classroom Labs, makerspaces, and outdoor settings), there is a lack of systematic evidence regarding how Initial Teacher Education (ITE) prepares pre-service teachers (PSTs) to pedagogically utilize these environments. Current literature is fragmented across educational systems and terminologies, often conflating mere exposure to a space with the development of professional competence. The field lacks a synthesis distinguishing whether PSTs are simply experiencing these spaces as learners or are being intentionally trained to interpret, configure, enact, adapt, and evaluate them as professional resources. Furthermore, it remains unclear which dimensions of professional knowledge are addressed, how outcomes are assessed, and whether current preparation models effectively bridge the gap between spatial exposure and pedagogical application.

Methodology
This study is a systematic literature review conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 statement.

Data Sources: Searches were conducted in Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection for peer-reviewed journal articles published between January 2020 and July 2026.
Search Strategy: The search combined terms for "Initial Teacher Education" (or equivalents) with "Learning Space" (or equivalents). The strategy prioritized sensitivity to capture the heterogeneous terminology of the field.
Screening Process: From an initial pool of 1,846 records, a human-in-the-loop screening process was employed. Two human reviewers independently assessed records, utilizing two GenAI systems as decision-support tools to assist with title/abstract screening. Discordant AI recommendations were manually validated.
Eligibility: Studies were included if they involved PSTs in an implemented physical learning experience (excluding purely virtual environments) and addressed the pedagogical use, design, or evaluation of that space.
Final Corpus: 42 reports were sought for full-text retrieval; 4 were unretrievable, leaving 38 reports for full-text eligibility assessment. After excluding 6 articles that did not meet the criteria, 32 studies were included in the review.
Analysis: Data extraction and synthesis were guided by the review questions, focusing on the conceptualization of spaces, learning experiences, professional knowledge dimensions, and assessment methods.

Key Contributions and Results

1. Conceptualization of Spatial Learning
The review distinguishes three analytically distinct forms of spatial learning, finding that current literature is heavily skewed toward the first:

Learning in space: Predominant. PSTs participate in innovative settings (classrooms, museums, outdoors) primarily as learners or novices. This correlates with positive affect, self-efficacy, and identity formation but does not guarantee professional competence.
Learning about space: Less frequent. Involves explicit analysis of spatial possibilities, constraints, safety, and authority.
Learning to teach with space: Weakest. Involves the deliberate selection, justification, enactment, adaptation, and evaluation of spatial arrangements. No study in the corpus assessed this complete process as an integrated professional capability.

2. Professional Knowledge Dimensions
The synthesis identifies four interrelated dimensions of professional knowledge, which are unevenly developed in current ITE:

Interpretative Knowledge: Recognizing how layout, visibility, and resources enable or constrain activity. Often acquired tacitly rather than through explicit instruction.
Design Knowledge: Selecting and justifying arrangements. Evidence shows PSTs often design within a space (lessons, resources) rather than designing the spatial configuration itself.
Adaptive Knowledge: Monitoring and modifying arrangements in response to changing dynamics. Visible in practicum but rarely assessed as a transferable capacity.
Organisational Knowledge: Managing timetables, co-teaching, and shared responsibility. Most evident in collaborative ILE practicum settings.
Critical/Evaluative Judgement: Addressing power, agency, and inclusion. While present in specific studies, no shared evaluative framework exists.

3. Learning Experiences and Outcomes

Exposure vs. Preparation: Greater exposure to innovative spaces (e.g., ILE practicum) is associated with more positive perceptions, but knowledge is often acquired tacitly. Intentional preparation involving scaffolded sequences (experience $\rightarrow$ analysis $\rightarrow$ design $\rightarrow$ enactment) is rare.
Assessment Gaps: Outcomes are predominantly measured through self-reports (affect, confidence, self-efficacy). Performance-based evidence is scarce. Crucially, no study used a validated instrument to assess the capacity to interpret, configure, or evaluate educational environments. One study noted a significant divergence between self-assessed and performance-based knowledge, suggesting PSTs may overestimate their spatial competence.
Contextual Variations: Classroom-based studies focus on collaboration and management; complementary settings (museums, outdoors) focus on disciplinary authenticity and logistics. However, in both, physical configuration is often empirically bundled with pedagogy and technology, making it difficult to isolate the specific contribution of spatial design.

Significance and Claims
The authors claim that while intentional spatial preparation is identifiable, it remains exceptional rather than systematic. The field currently documents exposure and affect more convincingly than the explicit, transferable development of spatial professional capability.

The review argues that:

Exposure is insufficient: Participation in innovative spaces does not automatically develop the capacity to use them professionally.
Relational Understanding: Educational significance emerges from the interaction of material arrangements, pedagogical purposes, and social relationships, not from architectural features alone.
Need for Integration: Initial teacher education must move beyond isolated initiatives to embed spatial experiences explicitly across coursework, practicum, and assessment.
Future Directions: The field requires robust, performance-based measures and longitudinal research designs to move beyond self-reported perceptions and establish whether PSTs can independently interpret, configure, and evaluate physical learning environments.

The paper concludes that the current evidence base supports the need for a shift from treating space as a passive setting to treating it as an explicit object of professional inquiry and design in teacher preparation.

The Great Classroom Makeover: Are We Training Teachers to Use the New Rooms?

1. The "Three Ways to Learn" in a Room

2. The "Feel-Good" Trap

3. The Missing Puzzle Pieces

The Bottom Line

More like this