In Norway, as elsewhere in the Nordic countries, a number of open-plan schools were built in the 1960-70s. The arguments that were put forward for building open-plan schools were to improve teaching flexibility, organize different sizes of groups and to allow teachers to team-teach. Research studies have shown that when working in open-plan school buildings, teachers perceive that the functionality of the school building does not align with their views about good teaching, and that this has resulted in the majority of such schools being rebuilt to more traditional classrooms in the 1980s. 

The aim of this paper is to describe the processes of transition – from design to practice – when a new school starts and in the first eight years of its operation. The school in question was initially designed as an open-plan school building that opened in 2010. The study focuses on how the school leadership and teachers appropriate the educational spaces in an open-plan school that after the first year underwent continuous rebuilding in order to create functional teaching spaces related to the school’s leadership and the teachers' pedagogical views.

The theoretical framework used in this paper draws on post occupancy evaluation (POE) (Imms, W. Cleveland, B. Fisher, 2016)and educational theory. The educational theory focuses on how teachers appropriate the educational spaces, how meaning is created in relation to the perceived educational mission and how actions to create functionality in their teaching are expressed (Frelin & Grannäs, 2014; Kress & Selander, 2012; Stables, 2015).

Methodological design:The data in this study is collected in a Norwegian upper secondary school. Data is based on multiple sources, and particularly  on walk-through evaluations with the school’s leadership and teachers, and is supplemented by subsequent interviews (de Laval, 2014)with the same individuals. The selected teachers represent different study programmes and subjects. 

The preliminary results show differences in how teachers perceive the learning environment depending on the subjects they teach and the extent of project-based teaching.