Future-focused education has been a concern of jurisdictions around the world since the closing decades of the twentieth century. The shift in educational paradigms has led to a dismantling of the standardisation of the industrial era, to embrace an educational approach that is more concerned with flexibility, adaptation and choice, with the premise that this will better equip students to face an uncertain future. In New Zealand, as well as many other countries, this process of change has been accompanied by a renewed interest in school building design, with policy specifically emphasising the development of flexible learning spaces. Through deliberate design choices, flexible learning spaces are intended to promote student-centred and collaborative teaching practice, creating an innovative learning environment which is adaptable and future-focused.

Through the lens of Lefebvre’s spatial triad of conceived, perceived and lived space and the methodological sensitivity of actor-network theory, this thesis focused on the work of seven English teachers working within flexible learning spaces in one New Zealand secondary school. Using ethnographic methods of classroom observation, interviews and document analysis, the research aimed to explore the ways in which the innovative learning environment was envisaged and enacted, and to identify factors which supported or limited the enactment of the innovative learning environment vision. By adopting actor-network theory, I shifted the focus on teachers as agents of pedagogical change to consider the ways in which non-human actors also contributed to the existence of an innovative learning environment.

By examining and critiquing the common elements of the future-focused educational discourse, as well as considering the participants’ interpretations of space and the affordances of the New Zealand curriculum, a more holistic vision of future-focused education emerged. This vision moved beyond a focus on the development of employment-related skills to include ideas around social responsibility and personal fulfilment, and encompassed what the participants hoped to achieve within the innovative learning environment. However, this vision was not always enacted in the everyday reality of classroom practice.

Adopting actor-network theory to understand how conceived, perceived and lived space were constructed highlighted that multiple conceived versions of space existed, and these competed for dominance as teachers interpreted the space. Analysis of the actors involved in these conceptions revealed that, while the same physical elements of the spatial design contributed to each conception, invisible policy actors differed and influenced the ways in which the design elements were perceived. Therefore, the lived experience of the space depended on which policy actors were dominant at particular moments.

Overall, the thesis highlights the multiplicity of innovative learning environments, confirming that the existence of flexible learning spaces alone does not lead to sustained pedagogical change. Instead, innovative learning environments exist in various forms, some of which are more aligned with the conceived vision than others. However, in order to more fully enact the conceived vision of an innovative learning environment, there is a need for teachers, as well as architects and policy makers to develop greater awareness of the unintended consequences of various actors and their interactions.