Introduction

The interest in educational environments has historical roots, for example in the writings of Dewey (1916, 1938; cf. Hansen 2002). Dewey observed that as environmental processes included several features, rigorous conceptualisations of these processes were required. A crucial aspect of learning environments is how they are designed to support pupils’ learning and problem solving. In such environments, the role of the teacher should be that of a facilitator and supporter of the resources that are provided. Besides the interaction between teachers and pupils, the interplay between pupils and their environment is also important for the teaching and learning process.

The current notions of innovative learning environments are generally characterised by the intention to provide different teaching and learning practices, rather than established and conventional ones, and to include new technologies (Burden et al. 2019). Innovativeness is also a matter of degree along a continuum, in relation to traditional, collectively established approaches to teaching (Cranmer and Lewin 2017; Burden et al. 2019). Dewey reminds us that such ambitions should include rigorous conceptualisations of the processes taking place in these learning environments.

At the societal level, interest in innovative educational environments and their relevance for so-called 21st century skills have increased over the last 10 years, especially amongst educational researchers with regard to collaborative problem solving and creative thinking. This is mainly due to the increased digitalisation of society and education. As a result of changes in people’s working conditions, a market demanding innovative skills and the digitalisation of working life, many researchers and policymakers no longer consider the traditional classroom, with a teacher standing in front of the class and pupils sitting at their desks, as the standard for 21st century teaching (cf. Grainger et al. 2019; Young et al. 2020). This shift has also reinforced the idea of pupils and teachers working together in a nurturing learning environment with innovative practices, including paying attention to the environment’s possibilities and constraints (e.g. Sasson et al. 2022; Fletcher et al. 2023).

One example in the policy arena is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) promotion of innovative learning environments (e.g., 2020), which encourages student-centred learning in rich educational settings and is included as a reference in several studies within the field. According to the OECD, an innovative learning environment should be understood as “an organic, holistic concept - an ecosystem that includes the activity and the outcomes of the learning” (OECD 2013). Also here, the notion of 21st century skills is related to practices carried out in innovative environments. In the extensive research field of innovative learning environments, it is therefore of interest to focus on the body of research responding to this powerful trend of 21st century skills in the international field. The recommendations of the OECD and other actors, such as UNESCO,Footnote 1 can be interpreted as parts of a dominant discursive pattern that aims to shift the focus from teacher-centred classrooms to creative learning classrooms assisted by the teacher.

As indicated above, conceptualisation is crucial for approaching educational environments in a rigorous manner. Theory is a conceptually-based interpretation of facts and their relationships. According to Suppes (1974), theory draws attention to what is important in the experience of education, recognises its complexity and provides a tool for problem solving and generalisation. The main characteristic of an innovative learning environment is that pupils are provided with a space that enables them to learn with the support of a teacher in their various school subjects. As classroom processes in general are characterised by complexity regarding interactive factors, theory pays attention to how such mechanisms occur in a way that simple observations cannot (Suppes 1974). If this is the case for studies of classrooms in general, studies of classrooms designed as innovative learning environments should also gain from a rigorous conceptualisation of the interactions that occur within them. Even though the value of a study depends on many aspects, the perspective of theory is of interest in a review of research on this topic.

Previous research reviews on innovative learning environments have paid attention to pupils’ skills and competencies (Chalkiadaki 2018) in learning environments, whether and how digital environments contribute to personalised teaching and learning (González-Salamanca et al. 2020), the development of a configurative synthesis on the contribution to personalised, game-based learning (Qian and Clarke 2016) and authentic student-centred learning (Patrix and Benade 2018). Benade (2021) articulates the need for a more robust theoretical underpinning regarding spatial dimensions, rather than what is understood as instrumental approaches. The theoretical framing in the research of innovative learning environments is also the focus of this review, albeit with a broader perspective than that suggested by Benade’s space theoretical approach indicated above.

This review therefore looks at how the research field has (so far) approached classroom processes theoretically. This is done with regard to theoretical perspectives (ways of seeing), the application of theory to data and whether such conceptualisations are present in the research field or not. Against the background of an emerging social interest in innovative learning in complex environments, the research interest in this review is research on innovative learning environments and whether and how such processes are conceptualised theoretically. The aim of the review is therefore to map the conceptions of teaching and learning in studies focusing on innovative learning environments and how they are applied in relation to empirical data.

Design

Methodology

As the interest in this review is the relation to theoretical conceptualisation, a so-called meta-narrative review has been a source of inspiration. Newman and Gough (2020) characterise such a review as paying attention to:

[…] understanding differences between research studies as possibly being due to differences between their underlying research traditions. This means that each piece of research is located (and, when appropriate aggregated) within its own research tradition and the development (configured) through time and across paradigms. (p. 18)

Since the interest in this study is to explore different approaches to the broad field of innovative learning environments a meta-narrative review aims to characterise its traditions and paradigms focussing on the use of theory.

Search procedure

The field of innovative learning environments is hard to delimit in data-based research reviews due to the voluminous references to the concept. Therefore, the decision was taken to capture publications relating to 21st century skills, i.e., skills related to education fostered in innovative learning environments. The intention here is not to equate the conditions for 21st century skills with innovative learning environments, but rather to delimit the number of publications on the research object of innovative learning environments. The reason for this is to make the number of publications manageable and to link the research object to the current trend of 21st century skills named in international policies and promoted by the OECD.

The terms included in the search strategy are displayed in Table 1. The terms were combined using Boolean operators, based on the principle (population OR population) AND (exposure OR exposure) AND (outcome OR outcome). The following databases were utilised: ERIC (Ebsco), Scopus (Elsevier), Academic Search Elite (Ebsco) and Web of Science (Thomson Reuter). A librarian conducted the formal searches in March 2021. The complete search and inclusion process is described in the form of a PRISMA flow chart (Fig. 1) and the search strategies are available as supplementary material. The formal search was limited to peer-reviewed articles and reviews, books and book chapters published since 2008.

Table 1 Terms included in the search
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Fig. 1
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The search and inclusion process

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A librarian carried out a supplementary search in February 2023 with the intention of retrieving material that had previously been disregarded due to the initial search being limited to material published since 2008. The supplementary search made use of the same formal search strategy and databases as the initial search and was limited to peer-reviewed articles and reviews, books and book chapters published before 2008. Only articles written in the English language were included. No additional citation searches were conducted. The complete search and inclusion process is described in the form of a PRISMA flow chart (see Table 1) and the search strategies are available as supplementary material.

The initial search and supplementary search returned a combined total of 2809 articles (Scopus n = 1129, Academic Search Premier n = 280, Web of Science n = 568 and ERIC n = 832). Duplicates were removed using Endnote in accordance with the de-duplication method presented by Bramer et al. (2016). After the de-duplication process 1949 articles remained.

The screening process was carried out in three steps. In the first step, the authors, using the web-based tool Rayyan (https://rayyan.ai/), screened all titles and abstracts according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria (Table 1). Papers addressing the arts (music, visual arts etc.) were excluded due to their established tradition of a (more or less) student-centred classroom environment. Papers addressing higher education were also limited to those focusing on the school system and the current discourse to reform traditional classrooms prominent in recent policy texts, such as those by the OECD. The screening was carried out by a single reviewer. In the first step, 1774 articles were excluded, leaving 175 eligible for the second step.

A further selection of PDF-files was based on their focus on the innovative learning environment, which resulted in 51 research papers. This selection was done in two steps: first by searching words and then titles. Publications that did not elaborate the notion of an innovative learning environment were excluded. Innovative environments consisting of digital environments, such as virtual reality and digitally designed classrooms, were included and labelled appropriately. All the publications shown in Supplementary Table S1 were characterised by a brief description of the innovative learning environment and the process in focus in order to make the relevance of inclusion according to the object of the review visible.

Analysis procedure

As this review relates to research on innovative learning environments and how such environments are conceptualised, the various publications were coded according to their theoretical approaches, i.e., whether or not they had a theoretical approach and if they did how it was applied in the research as a whole. All the publications were categorised according to genres, such as essays or measurement studies. The central characteristics of teaching and learning were noted, as was the type of analytical approach used (see Supplementary Table S1). Theories were included or excluded by taking the level of abstraction into account, sometimes based on references to authors like Vygotsky or Dewey. Concepts that were regarded as being equal to empirical phenomena, without the need for empirical operationalisation, were counted as studies without a theoretical frame. This also implied that concrete pedagogic descriptions of teaching, such as ‘students/pupils searching for knowledge’, were not counted as theory even though they may have been originally labelled as such.

An analysis of how a theoretical concepts were applied was carried out by identifying the conceptual core formulations and following them from introduction to method, results and conclusions. The degree of concept application was assessed as strong and discernible as vague or weak (see Supplementary Table S2). This classification was based on the coherence between the theoretical frame and/or concepts introduced in the first part of the review, and the following application of the frame/concepts to the empirical findings and the review’s conclusion.

(Non-)Conceptualisations of learning in innovative learning environments

The results in this section are divided into two main themes with concomitant sub-themes: studies without a theoretical framework and those applying a theoretical framework. Presenting a framework does not necessarily imply that it is operationalised as shown and classified in accordance with the second main theme, the application of theory and concepts. As shown in the first theme, below, most studies (29/51) do not refer to any theory or corresponding conceptualisation when examining the function(s) of an innovative learning environment. Supplementary Table S1 follows the same structure of themes, describes the basic results and shows how the teaching and learning processes are depicted.

Non-conceptualised: studies without a theoretical framework (n = 29)

Measuring without a theoretical frame (n = 10)

These studies aim to measure the effects of student-centred learning in innovative learning environments based on statistical measurements of the pupils’ developed skills (Gobert et al. 2015; Anagün 2018; O’Leary et al. 2018; Byers et al. 2018a, 2018b; Al Kandari and Al Qattan 2020; Cai and Gut 2020), curriculum elements (Mason and Scrivani 2004; Stehle and Peters-Burton 2019) and school leaders’ experiences (Everatt et al. 2019).Footnote 2

Essays without a theoretical frame (n = 5)

The essays without a theoretical frame are based on developed reasoning about innovative learning environments (digital environments 3/4). These essays do not conceptualise the processes of pupils’ learning in a systematic way (Kay 2009; Taggart 2014; Alismail and McGurie 2015; Farisi 2016; Webb et al. 2018).

Descriptive qualitative study (without a theoretical framework) (n = 11)

These studies examine innovative learning environments using thematical descriptions and have no theoretical framework (Brown 2006; Cardno et al. 2019; Chalkiadaki 2018; French et al. 2020; González-Salamanca et al. 2020; Hutchinson et al. 2020; Karakoyun and Lindberg 2020; Kocakaya et al. 2016; Patrix and Benade 2018; Qian and Clarke 2016;Footnote 3 Smardon et al. 2015).Footnote 4

Theoretical frame outlined but not applied to result (n = 3)

This framework is not operationalised in the analysis of the data but remains separate in the introduction section (Barak et al. 2006; Fletcher et al. 2020; Fletcher and Everatt 2021).

Conceptualised: studies applying a theoretical framework (n = 22)

Measurement study applying theoretical frame (n = 3)

In these studies, theory is (more or less) operationalised into a quantitative design (Scheer et al. 2011; Schuitema et al. 2012; Lin et al. 2015).

Qualitative data theorised (n = 13)

Innovative learning environments are studied by means of qualitative data collection and analysed using space-oriented theory, such as Lefevbre’s or Massey’s work (Charteris et al. 2017, 2018; Benade 2019; Charteris and Smardon 2019), network-oriented theories (Donovan et al. 2014; Carlvalho et al. 2020) or other approaches (Leask and Younie 2001; Rasku Puttonen et al. 2002; Bottino 2004; Care et al. 2016; Guo and Woulfin 2016; Kucirkova and Littleton 2017; Grannäs and Staven 2021).

Theoretical essays not based on data (n = 6)

This group consists of theoretical studies in which the spatial environment (Benade 2017, 2021; Bojesen 2017; Couch 2018; Deerness et al. 2018) and teaching design (Glaser 2000) are in focus.

Related to the interest in theory, the research field identified in this study often contains descriptive, non-conceptualised studies or sometimes (in 6 cases) theoretical essays without any systematic observation of processes in the environment. In the next section, the empirical studies are reviewed based on how theory is applied.

How are the concepts applied?

The application of theoretical concepts is classified according to the three categories indicated in Supplementary Table S2, the details of which. are presented and explained in the following sections.

Strong application (n = 8)

In this category, concepts are introduced and essentially shape the design, result and conclusion. This is largely the case for the above category, ‘measurement study applying a theoretical frame’ (Scheer et al. 2011; Schuitema et al. 2012; Lin et al. 2015) and for Care et al.’s (2016) intention to develop a model for measurement. In the qualitative studies by Grannäs and Staven (2021), Guo and Woulfin (2016), Leask and Younie (2001), Rasku Puttonen et al. (2002) and, the introduced concepts are followed up in the latter sections of the papers.

Discernible application (n = 3)

The qualitative studies by Bottino (2004), Donovan et al. (2014) and the policy critique by Couch (2018) contain some discernible applications.

Weak application (n = 4)

In the qualitative studies by Charteris et al. (2017, 2018), Charteris and Smardon (2019) and Carvalho et al. (2020), the introduced concepts are followed up to a limited extent and appear to have the intention of inspiring the analysis rather than being systematically applied to the empirical data.

The different degree of application partly mirrors the research traditions in which strong applications reflect a quantitative tradition, while weaker applications reflect a humanistic interpretative tradition. In the latter, concepts are not necessarily applied but rather designate the authors’ direction of interpretation. On the other hand, introducing a concept yet partly leaving it aside may result in uncertainty in terms of its relevance for the result of the study. In addition, four qualitative studies occur in the strong category and three in the middle category. As shown in the first main category, ‘non-conceptualised’, the majority of studies do not rely on any theory or corresponding conceptualisation when examining the environment, while other studies do not always (7/15) explicitly connect theory to the empirical data.

Conclusion

Bibliometric surveys have inbuilt limitations. Although several indexed books and book chapters are included, non-indexed work like doctoral dissertations are not. However, searching for indexed publications provides an insight into this important part of the field. This meta-narrative study has captured important features in the field of innovative learning environments. Grant and Booth (2009) talk about the risk of oversimplification in these kinds of reviews due to its broadness. Although a meta-narrative review does not meld former research into a rigorous cumulative body of knowledge, its purpose is to characterise the general directions of a field in relation to a specific issue and assess the consequences of different inclusions and exclusions of attention in the investigated field.

Mapping the different approaches to the theorisation and conceptualisation of innovative learning environments’ meta-knowledge, and what is highlighted or remains hidden, can shed further light on the research field of innovative learning environments. As student-centred learning in innovative learning environments is a strong trend in both policy and research, the review contributes insights that are relevant for both research and teaching practices. Although a wide range of studies has been captured, the selection of studies within the field of innovative learning environments could have been broader. Another possible limitation of the method is that the author of this article conducted the review alone. A collaborative study may have reduced bias and subjectivity in the analysis of the data.

However, this selection illuminates the recurring patterns in the field. The review clearly indicates that innovative learning environments are often approached without conceptualisations. For example, studies in the category ‘measuring without a theoretical frame’ do not explain or capture how what is measured operates in the environment under scrutiny. In the corresponding qualitative description, ‘descriptive qualitative study’, the interplay between the identified parts in the environment is not illuminated. The review shows that the introduction of theoretical concepts is only followed up in a coherent, explicit way in about half of the 15 cases. Although studies with vague applications may contribute in other ways, the introduced concepts appear to be redundant (cf. Klette 2012). Like some of the studies in the first group, ‘studies without a theoretical framework’ (cf. Fletcher et al. 2023), theory in the latter group functions as a pedagogical positioning rather than a tool for rigorously investigating an empirical object.

When concepts are introduced but not used, theory is not relied on for the study at hand and its different parts. From the perspective of this review, this implies that relationships between facts are often omitted and that there is a lack of coherence in the study’s structure.

This review has used a critical approach to the (identified) field of innovative learning environments regarding the use and non-use of theory and conceptualisation. Like all reviews, the positions and perspectives that are adopted have certain values for what counts as good research. The selected studies may offer important contributions other than those named in the review. However, if the purpose of a study is to capture the dynamics in the mechanisms of the learning environment (as in the classroom generally; Suppes 1974), the absence of theory would appear as a weakness.

Theoretical studies categorised as ‘theoretical essays not based on data’ may contribute heuristic knowledge, albeit with a dominance of theoretical thinking that is not adjusted to particular dimensions of the lived learning environment. Only the everyday interactions within the environments may actualise what the critical factors are for the development of student learning. Although theorising enables an innovative learning environment to be imagined in new ways, theory is not adjusted with empirical findings and stays with reflection, rather than providing explicit and rigorous descriptions of what is relevant and critical for education in these environments (cf. Klette 2012).

In relation to earlier reviews of innovative environment research (Qian and Clarke 2016; Benade 2017, 2021; Chalkiadaki 2018; Patrix and Benade 2018; González-Salamanca et al. 2020), this review highlights that, in general, the current research on innovative learning environments could take a step further and shed light on processes in innovative learning environments through the interplay between data and theory, i.e., empirical facts and their relationships. Further studies of the methodological relationship between data and theory could test whether this preliminary pattern is stable. The trend of advocating this kind of teaching in terms of 21st century skills promoted by powerful agents, such as the OECD, should not obscure this need.