Abstract:

According to recent research from the Oecd, Innovative Learning Environments are the key success factors of 21st century school. The inadequacy of traditional education to meet society’s transformation based on knowledge, fast ICT development and the growing availability and importance in young peoples’ lives, together with the spread of on-line learning have given the school new challenges. The key to success for the implementation of these environments is the school organization, position on which the two main research streams on school converge, the School Effectiveness and the School Improvement movements, that have characterized the debate in the school in the last 35 years.

What are the factors that make a learning environment innovative? Is it possible to measure them? How could innovative learning environments be fostered from an organizational point of view? Can self-organization perspective be an alternative to the top-down approach to school? What are the capabilities of the self-organized school? What is the relationship between self-organized capabilities and learning environments?

This work attempts to answer to these questions through literature review on innovative learning environments and self-organizing schools, the study of the international best practices and multiple case study analysis of italian best practices.

The contributions of this work are:
a) a framework that identifies the key variables of innovative learning environments;
b) an assessment tool concerning innovative learning environments measuring the variables through a system of indicators;
c) a framework that identifies the typical capabilities of self-organized schools; and
d) a tool concerning the framework that measures the capabilities.

The comparison between the results obtained with the two assessment tools allows to observe that the capabilities of the self-organised school are connected to innovative learning environments. However, the capabilities have a different weight in the environments. These results suggest and define policies on the organizational aspects of school in order to improve learning.

Keywords:

Innovative Learning Environments, Self-Organisation, School Organisation.