This study contributes to research on learning environments and their design by answering the question: How do upper secondary science teachers perceive the affordances and constraints for teaching and learning provided by a new science education building? (Gibson, 1979; Young & Cleveland, 2022)

Data was collected during pedagogical walk-throughs (Frelin et al., 2022; Sigurðardóttir et al., 2021) with two groups of science teachers, right before they moved into the new building. The walk-throughs were made in classrooms and transitional spaces, e.g. corridors and a cafeteria, which may also provide innovative opportunities for student learning (Boys et al. 2014). Data consisted of photos and plans of the spaces, teachers’ individual walk-through protocols and audio recordings of teacher utterances.

The analyses were supported by Ravelli and McMurtrie's (2016) multimodal theory of the built environment, focusing on representational, interactional and organisational meaning. The analytic focus was on how the teachers saw the presence of, and interaction among, different elements of the physical environment to afford or constrain the teaching and learning of science. 

Preliminary results: Representationally, classrooms, desks and storage opportunities were generally found well suited for teaching science although blackout curtains were insufficient for some teaching needs in physics, and teachers would not always have space to help all students. Interactionally, the building was perceived as welcoming with a light atmosphere. A traditional hierarchical structure with faculty offices on the locked top floor created a social distance between teachers and students, which was partly mitigated by teachers using standing tables in the student cafeteria. Organisationally, the lockers, staircase, classroom doors and the cafeteria, usually found in a school building, together with large windows both towards the outside and to breakout spaces, helped achieve cohesion within the building.