Raechel French | Making a Difference in Education Through Design

LearningSCAPES Edition

January 6, 2023

Dr. Raechel French is passionate about helping schools design and use their spaces better and has been actively researching and working in the educational architecture industry for over a decade. In this time, Dr. French found that even the best planning processes often do not lead to the school envisioned. She toured project after project of award-winning work to see collaborative spaces empty, glass walls covered in paper, locked small group rooms, and lecture instruction in spaces meant for student-led, multi-modal work. The movement towards providing these innovative learning spaces is far outpacing the delivery of professional development and organizational shifts that would allow them to achieve their potential. The gap between design intent and reality is commonplace.

To better understand this gap, she joined the Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN) at the University of Melbourne through a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship in 2017, working on the Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC) project. She continued this work in the United States through her PhD research.

Dr. French's research elevates the importance of school community development, particularly building positive and trusting relationships among teachers. These relationships are prerequisite to achieving the goals envisioned around innovative learning spaces since these often require more collaboration and sharing of both space and students. Her work also proposes a "Systems View of an ILE" in which intentional Physical and Organizational Supports serve as "nudges" to reduce the complexity of spatial shifts and enable shifts in practice.