Innovative learning environments

Innovation is a key element of today’s societies and economies, and that includes how we learn. This report looks at inspiring cases of innovative learning environments from across the globe, as part of the OECD’s Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) project. The project has gathered 125 examples from more than 20 countries and carried out detailed case study research on 40 of them. These cases have been identified within their own system as significant departures from mainstream learning arrangements for younger children or older teenagers, while promising to meet the ambitious objectives needed for the 21st century. In this report, a “learning environment” is as an organic, holistic concept - an eco - system that includes the activity and the outcomes of the learning. Some of the innovations examined are in places called schools and others are not; in either case, the report argues in favour of different units of analysis than the institutional variables of “school” or “classroom” when the aim is to understand and to innovate learning. More appropriate units have been shaped into a new framework that provides the structure of this report. This report analyses in detail the practices revealed in the case studies. It lets the cases “speak for themselves” by illustrating the different issues and dimensions with extensive edited extracts.