Innovative Learning Environments: About Traditional and New Patterns of Learning

Source: European Educational Research Journal, Volume 13 Number 2 2014, p. 143‑154

The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) launched a project in a number of countries (including several European countries, among them Austria), which focuses on how ‘innovative learning environments’ (ILE) can contribute to offering meaningful and sustainable learning experiences for learners in the twenty-first century.

This article presents the main findings of the Austrian part of the project.
The article discusses whether and how the development of ILE is possible against the background of school routines and a school system that seems to be successfully resistant to change.
The article focuses on the question of whether and how learning is made meaningful for the pupils.
Furthermore, this paper examines whether and how those learning environments identified as innovative really do support fruitful and meaningful processes of learning.