From Low‐Lying Roofs to Towering Spires: Toward a Heideggerian understanding of learning environments

This article explores the significance that environments play in terms of the learning process. In the United States, the legacy of John Dewey's intellectual efforts left a theoretical understanding that views the architectural composition of learning environments as instrumental mediums which house the educational process. This understanding of learning environments is precipitated by a separation of human agents as subjects and their environments as objects. By contrast, Martin Heidegger's theory of ontology, and its reconfiguration of the subject and object relationship, lends itself to an understanding of the architectural composition of learning environments as dwellings.