Online Education Blog

There is nothing new or remarkable about these environmental considerations. We consider most of them when using our native “common sense”. We often make individual adjustments to our living and learning space(s) to be more functional or comfortable. However, sometimes these adjustments may diminish an others opportunity for learning. Tin foil or shades on windows reduce occasions for a view of the sky, a beautiful sunset, the landscape or an outside object used to illustrate a particular lesson. Shrinking the height of an existing classroom to reduce heating or cooling costs may alter the sound qualities or prevent the display of student work. Brightly colored walls or high light levels may increase glare and possibly unwanted heat gain through lamp radiation. Hard cleanable surfaces may simplify maintenance tasks but increase reverberation or prevent teacher or student displays and consequently provide an atmosphere which is unpleasant to learn or teach within. All of these well intended decisions resulted in unintentional problems which are known to affect childrens’ learning ability or make education more difficult.
When planning or remodeling a classroom environment, a successful (subjective) learning space requires that both the educator and environmental designer understand the affects of each criteria quality with respect to learning as well as each criteria’s interrelationship to each other.
Generally, the larger the room the more flexibility and the smaller, the more intimate. A rectangular shaped room affords more interactive visibility between occupants whereas “L” shaped ones or ones with alcoves allow for variety of privacy to individual learners. Movable wall devices can accommodate many different shapes. Scientific observations indicate that the student builds confidence through achievement. The ability to relate to elements within a room affords a degree of self empowering through scale that is relative. Size and locations of counters, windows, furniture and storage elements all should be considered or be adapted to the scale of the user.
Several studies indicate that teachers rather than students are more upset by temperature fluctuations within a classroom. Test scores are not adversely affected by temperatures except under extreme conditions. Students generally like the temperature slightly cooler (5 degrees to 10 degrees) than do teachers. Traditionally, boy’s or men’s clothing insulates their bodies slightly better than doe’s girl’s or women’s clothing. Because the temperature, humidity and ventilation of an enclosed space will depend on a number of factors including the configuration and materials of the building, amount of glazing, size and volume of the space, number of occupants and their current state of activity as well as the heating and cooling system, flexibility for manipulating that system is extremely important for comfort. If the teacher must override existing controls by opening doors or windows to augment their comfort, the system is self defeated and the teacher probably agitated (i.e. not doing the best teaching). Controls should be independent for each space and be simple to operate.
A good classroom must include the possibility for individual control as well as provide a well proportioned, stimulating and comfortable learning space which takes advantage of local character, solar orientation, appropriate views, proper functional interaction with adjoining learning elements and strong connections with the surrounding community. Allowing teachers to easily adapt learning environments to their individual pedagogical style(s) will increase the opportunity for student learning.