Contemporary learning environment designs bring to life schools featuring loose fitting, flexible layouts that upset the stable certainty of the four-walled classroom. This article presents the argument that adopting a theoretical approach to researching the role of spatiality and space in relation to innovative building design in education will enable insights otherwise not possible, and, in the process, enhance the available store of knowledge and understanding. A review of a sample of published research that considers innovative learning environment design suggests that robust theoretical approaches are eschewed in favour of instrumental research often concerned with the role played by building fabric or with psychosocial responses to the surrounding learning environment. To adopt an alternative, theoretical perspective that privileges the concept of ‘space’ in education, it is first important to understand developments in spatiality. Exemplifying one such theoretical approach to questions of spatiality in education, Lefebvre’s spatial theory is applied to the recent development of FLS and ILE in New Zealand, though several optional theoretical approaches to spatiality are suggested as open to education researchers.

当代的学习环境设计使生活学校变得活灵活现，其布置松散，布局灵活，破坏了四壁教室的稳定确定性。本文提出了一种论点，即采用一种理论方法来研究空间性和空间在教育中与创新建筑设计相关的作用，将使原本不可能的见识得以实现，并在此过程中增加对知识和理解的可利用性。对考虑到创新学习环境设计的已发表研究样本的评论表明，避开了稳健的理论方法，而倾向于工具研究，这些研究通常与建筑结构的作用或对周围学习环境的社会心理反应有关。要采用替代方案，在赋予教育“空间”概念以特权的理论观点下，首先重要的是要了解空间的发展。列斐伏尔的空间理论是对教育中的空间性问题的一种这样的理论方法的例证，该方法被应用到了新西兰FLS和ILE的最新发展中，尽管有人建议对教育研究者开放几种可选的空间性理论方法。