MEET THE SPEAKER
When the way students learn changes, should the spaces around them change too? And where does that transformation begin?
For schools, the challenge goes beyond creating beautiful or functional environments. It is about shaping places that spark curiosity, encourage participation, support collaboration and make learning feel connected to real life.
This is where Shawn Stanly’s educator-led perspective adds a distinctive dimension. His work looks at learning not simply as something that happens in a space, but as an experience that can be shaped by the environment, the community and the learner.
At PULSE 2026 | Where Culture Meets Learning, Shawn brings this perspective into the room – exploring how student experience, community and learning environments can come together to create spaces that do more than accommodate learning: they help it happen.
Shawn Stanly
School & Student Experience Lead, Ruang2Gather by MYLES
Shawn is a 2024 RISE Educator Award winner, recognised for innovative teaching approaches that included a flight simulator and a marine conservation learning experience. His work demonstrates how imaginative environments and hands-on experiences can make learning more engaging and connected to the world beyond the classroom.
His experience at SK RPS Banun in Gerik, Perak offers an especially powerful example.
The school serves the local Orang Asli community, and Shawn was involved in developing a Learning Hub that transformed an underused area into a multifunctional environment for learning, play and collaboration. The idea began with students who saw an opportunity to create something meaningful for their school and community. Parents and other community members were also involved in the process.
The result was not simply another room in a school.
It became a place for multimedia learning, music and arts, exploration, quiet study and community engagement – demonstrating how a thoughtfully reimagined environment can expand what learning can look and feel like.
From Teaching to Learning Environments
What makes Shawn’s perspective particularly relevant to PULSE is the connection between pedagogy and place.
His experience asks us to look beyond the question of what is taught and consider:
- How does the environment influence engagement?
- Can students participate in shaping the spaces they learn in?
- What happens when a school space reflects the culture and needs of its community?
- How can limited or existing spaces become richer opportunities for learning?
His work at SK RPS Banun is also documented as a lived experience of reimagining learning environments in an Orang Asli school, including the challenges of access, pedagogy and creating more conducive environments for learning.
Why Shawn’s Perspective Matters at PULSE
For educators, Shawn offers a grounded perspective on making learning more experiential and meaningful.
For architects and designers, his experience brings the learner’s lived experience into the spatial conversation.
For school leaders and founders, his work demonstrates how existing spaces can become catalysts for participation, collaboration and community.
And for anyone thinking about the future of education, Shawn raises a fundamental question:
If the way we learn is changing, how should the spaces around learning change with it?
Where Culture Meets Learning
This sits at the heart of PULSE 2026.
GLSN’s conversation around learning spaces is not only about buildings, classrooms or aesthetics. It is about the relationship between learners, educators, communities, culture and the environments they share.
Shawn brings an important voice into that conversation – one shaped from inside the classroom and carried into the wider world of community-driven learning-space redesign.
His perspective offers PULSE audiences an opportunity to reconsider a familiar space from a different starting point:
Begin with the learner. Then ask what the space can make possible.
PULSE 2026 | Where Culture Meets Learning
5–7 October 2026 | Sheraton Grand Palace, Indore
For educators, school leaders, architects, designers, campus planners and anyone shaping the future of learning environments, Shawn’s perspective is one to experience in the room.