  Citation: Coelho, C.; Cordeiro, A.; Alcoforado, L.; Moniz, G.C. Survey on Student School Spaces: An Inclusive Design Tool for a Better School. Buildings 2022, 12, 392. https://doi.org/10.3390/ buildings12040392 Academic Editor: Kheir Al-Kodmany Received: 10 February 2022 Accepted: 16 March 2022 Published: 22 March 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). buildings Article Survey on Student School Spaces: An Inclusive Design Tool for a Better School Carolina Coelho 1, * , António Cordeiro 2 , Luís Alcoforado 3 and Gonçalo Canto Moniz 4 1 Department of Architecture, Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Coimbra, 3000 Coimbra, Portugal 2 Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Coimbra, 3000 Coimbra, Portugal; rochettecordeiro@fl.uc.pt 3 Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Coimbra, 3000 Coimbra, Portugal; lalcoforado@fpce.uc.pt 4 Department of Architecture, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, 3000 Coimbra, Portugal; gmoniz@uc.pt * Correspondence: carolina.coelho@uc.pt Abstract: This paper presents interdisciplinary research focused on the collaborative redesign in schools, in which an inclusive design tool was created for assessing student feedback on their school spaces and considering it as input for creating a better learning environment. It was developed by a research team using a participatory approach in schools drawn from architecture, geography, and educational sciences, to provide a comprehensive and intertwined approach to school spaces, communities and learning activities. The “Survey on Student School Spaces” (S3S) tool and its methodology are described here, which is a combination of two procedures: a questionnaire and a walkthrough. The first engages a far-reaching sample of participants and makes use of an online platform, while the latter details and justifies those outputs and involves visiting the school with the participants. The S3S pilot study was implemented in two partner schools, which act as the first project case studies. The data provided by this tool acted as the basis for the design proposal for one of the case studies, which included the students’ feedback and involved all the community in the school’s refurbishment. Finally, a discussion was held on the outputs achieved that may contribute towards a participatory design approach in other schools, the validation of the tool per se, and its potential future development and application. Keywords: school space; students; survey; participative design; inclusive research tool 1. Introduction This paper investigates how students evaluate their school spaces and how they propose the refurbishment of those spaces toward the creation of more suitable learning environments for the diverse activities within these schools. This, ultimately, aims at the co- creation and co-rehabilitation of the existing school building stock by considering student feedback as an effective input to both the research into and design of school spaces. For such purposes, it presents a tool which has been implemented in two basic schools with contrasting social and urban contexts in the Portuguese city of Coimbra. There is wide acceptance in the literature that comfort and well-being in the phys- ical space are paramount for promoting learning and student achievement [1–5] (p. 16) (“School facilities affect learning. Spatial configurations, noise, heat, cold, light, and air quality obviously bear on students’ and teachers’ ability to perform.” [5] (p. 16)), as well as for affecting “teacher mind frames” [6] (p. 19). (“The review sought to establish the existence of any evidence concerning the impact of learning environments on teacher mind frames.” [6] (p. 19)). Innovative learning environments have also been shown to impact learning outcomes [6–8] (p. 40). (“It finds a trend is becoming evident that suggests ILEs Buildings 2022, 12, 392. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12040392 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings