For many in the educational world, the learning goals have shifted to include more so-called 21st century skills and include, among others, technology use, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration (Rotherham & Willingham, 2010). To address this, researchers and policymakers have advocated for student-centered learning, however, too often we still find many activities taking place in schools that are primarily teacher-centered (Tan et al., 2006a). The issue may be that the physical environment is not conducive to student-centered learning activities.Many architects, school administrators, and scholars believe that the physical environment can shape behavior and interactions, therefore having influence on the activities that take place (Bergsagel et al., 2007; Devlin, 2010; Jacobs & Alcock, 2017; Lippman, 2010a; Nair et al., 2009; Prain et al., 2014; Woolner, 2010). Additionally, there are many studies that shed light on how the physical environment is (or is not) conducive to the intended learning/teaching activities (Cardellino & Woolner, 2019; Gislason, 2009, 2010; Prain et al., 2014), however, these studies lack specific detail about how the educational goals inform the learning/teaching activities and shape the design of the physical environment.This qualitative multi-case study investigated the relationship between the educational goals, the teaching and learning activities, and the affordances of the physical environment at two high schools. The results were gathered through observations, analysis of architectural plans, review of school documents, and in-depth interviews with teachers and principals. This research focused on: (a) identifying the affordances of the physical environment and how they did or did not support learning/teaching activities intended to align with 21st century learning goals in traditional and flexible-plan physical spaces, (b) how learning/teaching activities varied between traditional and flexible-plan physical spaces, (c) how teachers adjusted from traditional physical spaces to flexible-plan physical spaces, and (d) to what extent and in what ways teachers' practice changed in flexible-plan spaces compared to when they were in traditional spaces.Findings of this study suggest that flexible-plan spaces support student-centered learning/teaching activities since they are intentionally designed for this purpose. These activities aligned with the educational learning goals that included developing 21st century skills in students. The characteristics the flexible-plan spaces had in common were: (a) variety, (b) flexibility, (c) agility, (d) transparency, (e) comfort, and (f) technology integration. The learning/teaching activities in the flexible-plan spaces were multidimensional (many activities taking place simultaneously) and much more dynamic and fluid than in the traditional spaces. The learning/teaching activities in the traditional spaces were unidimensional (only one activity taking place at a time), and many of the learning/teaching activities were driven by the teacher. Additionally, teacher adaptation to flexible-plan spaces was really about learning to work collaboratively with other teachers since spaces are shared.
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