The Perfect Learning Environment
What conditions do people need to learn best? What influences our learning the most?
In one experiment involving 21,000 American primary school students, some were exposed to more blue-light (eg sunlight and digital light) than others during the school day. By the end of the academic year, the ones with more blue-light scored 26% more on reading and 20% more on mathematics tests than children with less blue-light exposure. So, replacing the artificial light in classrooms with natural light increases academic performances.
Teenagers are also easily affected by blue-light exposure. They secrete melatonin later in the day and earlier in the morning, meaning it is harder to fall asleep in the evening and wake up in the mornings. Not only can blue-light help lessen the impact of this sleep debt accumulated over the week, it also helps kids stay alert and store information. Pushing the start of the school day to late morning or early noon also reduces the effects of poor sleep that teenagers are bound to experience.
Next up: scenery. In another study done with 10,000 fifth graders, children with unrestricted views of nature consistently tested better in reading, maths and language arts than students with urban or no views. Furthermore, green surroundings help reduce the effects of attention deficit disorders like ADD and ADHD. Placing plants in classrooms also results in better physical health and behaviour of students, as they are sick less and fewer disciplinary measures are taken against them.
Noise and temperature are surprisingly large contributors as well. Children’s ability to filter out irrelevant noises, especially voices, is still developing, meaning that children are extremely vulnerable to noisy distractions. Several studies also show that noisy classrooms are detrimental to learning, as students in loud environments score worse in reading, writing and comprehension exams. The temperature should also have a 50% humidity and 20–23°C for effective learning. When going too far outside of these zones, students become distracted, and learning becomes difficult.
Lastly, the seating arrangement. Students are often least on task in rows, more on task in clusters and most effective in a semicircle arrangement. However, some studies find that seating arrangement effectiveness solely depends on the type of learning students will do. For 5 interactive activities, semicircles are best and clusters adequate, but for individual work, rows are recommended.
At the end of the day, learning is a complicated affair and the “perfect environment” is different for everyone, but hopefully this short summary helps to provide a clear image for the conditions to learn best in.
“Education is one of the blessings of life — and one of it’s necessities.” — Malala Yousafzai
