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ERIC Number: EJ1460686
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Feb
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0742-5627
EISSN: EISSN-1573-1758
Available Date: 2024-08-26
Examining Inclusivity in Flexible Learning Spaces: Expectations, Comfort, and Distractions
Sarah T. Zipf1; Leqi Li1; Gala Campos Oaxaca1; Crystal M. Ramsay1
Innovative Higher Education, v50 n1 p277-301 2025
Historically, classrooms have utilized stationary furniture, facing front toward a centralized instructor position, and limiting student-to-student interactions. Such classrooms often stem from design processes that tend to focus on building codes and feedback from investors, architects, and planners, which leaves little input from instructors and students until the end (Britnell, et al., 2009). With little to no input from primary users, classrooms can become less inclusive or inaccessible in a variety of ways, especially for students with disabilities. One way to address this problem is to design flexible learning classrooms so that instructors and students can customize the room. Seemingly more inclusive, we wanted to understand how the physical elements of a flexible classroom create opportunities and barriers for students with disabilities. This mixed-methods study includes data from an online survey, interviews, and digital drawings. We utilized a purposeful sample of students with documented disabilities (n = 16) and used the eight universal design goals as our main coding schema. Results show students carry expectations and predictions about their classrooms based on the layout or arrangement; students' social comfort can override physical comfort, even while expressing medical needs; students might misunderstand certain elements of flexible classrooms; and students can identify ways they were distracted by the room. Institutions and instructors interested in creating more inclusive spaces need to be intentional with flexible learning classrooms so that students can understand and utilize the affordances of these spaces.
Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2123/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA