Learning space or learning setting is a physical setting for a learning environment, a place in which teaching and learning occur. It may be an indoor or outdoor location, either actual or virtual. Learning spaces are highly diverse in use, configuration, location, and educational institution. They support a variety of pedagogies, including quiet study, passive or active learning, kinesthetic or physical learning, vocational learning, experiential learning, and others. As the design of a learning space impacts the learning process, it is deemed important to design a learning space with the learning process in mind.

The word school derives from Greek σχολή (scholē), originally meaning "leisure" and also "that in which leisure is employed", and later "a group to whom lectures were given, school". The Japanese word for school, gakuen, means "learning garden" or "garden of learning". Kindergarten is a German word whose literal meaning is "garden for the children", however the term was coined in the metaphorical sense of a "place where children can grow in a natural way".

Over time different methods of instruction have led to different types of learning spaces. Direct instruction is perhaps civilization's oldest method of formal, structured education and continues to be a dominant form throughout the world. In its essence it involves the transfer of information from one who possesses more knowledge to one who has less knowledge, either in general or in relation to a particular subject or idea. This method is commonly used in traditional classrooms. The Socratic method was developed over two millennia ago in response to direct instruction in the scholae of Ancient Greece. Its dialectic, questioning form continues to be an important form of learning in western schools of law. This method is commonly used in seminar rooms and smaller lecture halls. Hands-on learning, a form of active and experiential learning, predates language and the ability to convey knowledge by means other than demonstration, and has been shown to be one of the more effective means of learning and over the past two decades has been given an increasingly important role in education. This method is used in outdoor learning spaces, specialty labs, studios, vocational shops, maker spaces, and in physical education facilities.

Institutions that provide learning spaces can be categorized in several ways, including:

Learning environments are frequently organized into six pedagogical and physical models:

The physical, and/or virtual, characteristics of learning spaces play a strong role in their effectiveness and, by impacting student learning, on society. As Winston Churchill stated: "we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us."

The importance of interactions between individuals and their environment have long been established by Kurt Lewin's field theory and life space, Urie Bronfenbrenner's concept of microsystem, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's situated learning theory, and others. Rearch continues to show us that active learning, and learning spaces configured to support active learning, contribute to more effective learning and encourage different methods of instruction.

Learning spaces extend well beyond real-world, "brick and mortar" educational institutions. They are increasingly varied in style, configuration, and location. Their physical characteristics include many variables, including size, form, and shape; environmental; technological; space type and appropriateness for its intended activity and users; location; and numerous others. A basic tenet of learning spaces housed in buildings is to provide shelter, although many facilities from campuses to portable classrooms, do not provide shelter between individual spaces. Outdoor learning spaces rely on clothing and personal items to maintain comfort. The location of the learning space affects both its functional and operational interrelationships with other spaces, student and instructor cohorts, learning programs, and support spaces. The proportion of a space's height-width-length can affect the ability of learners to see instructional or demonstration material or the presenter. The orientation of the space towards adjacent spaces or the outdoor environment can affect activities, thermal comfort, as well as daylight penetration (if any) at different times of the day. Increased demand for flexibility and adaptability have seen greater use of (operable partition walls) to combine and separate spaces. Safety and security in schools, including major incidents of violence, bullying, and vandalism have led to increased use of security monitoring systems, strategies such crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), and sometimes competing discussions of transparency versus visible lockdown of learning spaces.