Classroom design and classroom behaviours

Abstract

The New Zealand Department of Education has introduced a new building code for primary schools. It has resulted in open-plan architecture being applied to schools - as they are being built as new schools, and as older schools are being remodelled. The fact that the architectural changes were introduced to the country without any prior training of teachers to work in the new settings, and without any simultaneous introduction of a programme for appropriate teacher preparation, prompted the question: to what extent can teacher/pupil classroom behaviours be influenced by changes made to the physical design of classrooms? A study was thus instigated which had two thrusts. (i) A carefully controlled experiment was carried out to see whether classroom behaviours could be manipulated through manipulations of the classroom's physical environment: these manipulations being in the form of different arrangements of pupils' desks in the room; and (ii) an observational study was undertaken to compare the classroom behaviours in open-plan schools with those in non-open-plan schools. The former study - the experiment - involved three classes and three furniture arrangements (checkerboard, clusters, and horseshoe) in a counterbalanced design. A sample of 12 pupils from each class were observed by means of systematic observation over an elapsed time of 9 weeks. The latter study was non-manipulative, involving the systematic observation of 9 pupils from each of 3 open-plan and 6 non-open-plan schools, over an elapsed time of one school term. Two class levels of pupils were observed independently. The observation instrument developed for the study contained categories of behaviour generated by the literature on open-plan in education, and open education. The conclusion reached was that there is some validity in the generalization: 'characteristic patterns of behaviour for a setting can be identified - these persisting regardless of the individuals involved' :that is, classroom behaviours do change with classroom physical environmental changes, so that architectually different school types can be distinguished at the behavioural level to a considerable extent. However, what occurs with in the walls of an educational environment reflects, not only the physical environment, but also the characteristics of the particular individuals concerned.