Student-Centred Classroom Environments in Upper Secondary School: Students’ Ideas About Good Spaces for Learning Versus Actual Arrangements

The aims of this chapter are to shed light on upper secondary school students’ ideas about good spaces for learning and to explore how the actual arrangement of the physical learning environment fits with these ideas. Data were collected in nine schools in Iceland through classroom observations and group interviews with students using the diamond ranking method. Pictures were used to learn about students’ attitudes about good and bad places for learning. The data were reviewed in the context of theories on student-centred learning. The results indicated that the physical environment in upper secondary school classrooms was rather traditional, with students sitting at individual tables in rows and the teacher positioned in the front of the room. The students seemed to acknowledge this arrangement, as they know it best. It was also most often ranked somewhere in the middle of the diamond. They especially liked arrangements that allowed them some flexibility or which enabled them to influence the environment, which was not very common to these schools. Most lessons were characterised according to the teacher-centred approach.