ABSTRACT. Using a minimal set of materials and an innovative methodology, a community-based multi-grade education program, popularly known as “School-in-a-Box,” has over the last two decades spread to tens of thousands of schools in vastly diverse contexts in India and other countries in the world. My paper will use the School-in-a-Box model to explore the re-envisioning and design of learning environments. I suggest that the challenge confronting us, as educators, is not primarily a shortage of economic resources but is rather a demand upon our imagination to radically re-envision learning environments. This is an invitation to think of “school-outside-the-box.” In sum, I claim that the central issue in education is not one of equal access to predetermined learning opportunities and assessments but a set of dynamic concerns about the nature of learning: for whom, with what objectives and in what context. pp. 76–88

Keywords: School-in-a-Box, learning environment, education, design, RIVER