Real+World+Learning+Environment

Dr. Betty Despenza-Green, Director of the National High School Initiative emphasized that “instead of starting from the physical, you need to start with the program you know you need to have. Then you can see how your existing structure won’t let you do that. And then you do the work of making physical changes” (Davidson, 2001). Schools of the future are no longer about “bricks and mortar” but about places where “learning relationships” are fostered (Rudd, Gifford, Morrison, & Facer, 2006, p.3). Designing schools or classrooms of the future requires us to understand and know what we expect of 21st century teaching and learning and then build schools to meet those requirements. Once we know what is needed one then “acknowledges the politics of built pedagogies and then works to create built spaces that shape empowering classroom practices of sociality (Monahan, 2002).

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