Abstract
Physical learning environments have long-shaped educational experiences, yet as pedagogical practices and technologies evolve, traditional spaces, especially the lecture hall, are being reconsidered for their relevance and effectiveness. Despite its status as an anachronism in student‐centred learning discourses, the lecture hall remains a defining feature of a student’s university journey. As higher education institutions recognise the need to shift teaching strategies, redesigning academic spaces to support complementary pedagogical approaches has become pivotal. This study examines two contrasting learning spaces – a traditional lecture hall and a hybrid, technology-rich “future-fir” classroom – to investigate how spatial design shapes pedagogical innovation and mediates the relationship between pedagogy and technology in an engineering classroom.
A brief review of the literature on learning spaces reveals a gap in understanding how physical environments interact with pedagogical innovation. Conceptually, the study is rooted in the next generation learning spaces field, with particular interest in collaborative academic environments and the nexus of space, practice, and technology. I draw on cultural-historical activity theory to illuminate societal and cultural factors that shape the evolution of teaching activities over time, and the pedagogy-space-technology-user framework to analyse how educational innovation unfolds in designed learning spaces.
Methodologically, this study employed textually-oriented discourse analysis under a social-constructivist lens, acknowledging that knowledge is co-constructed and experienced uniquely by each lecturer. Data comprised video and audio recordings of lectures, and reflective interviews conducted immediately afterwards. The core argument of the thesis is that space, technology, pedagogy, and the lecturer are dynamically entangled and cannot be considered in isolation. Contradictions arising from established norms – whether technological breakdowns or misaligned spatial affordances – create openings for reimagining teaching practices. My findings demonstrate that lecturers actively mediate learning environments by aligning technological resources with pedagogical purpose, and that more flexible and creative space designs can drive meaningful innovations in engineering education. In offering a re-imagining of how space impacts higher-education pedagogy, this study contributes both theoretically by integrating...