by Mark Waldecker

School administrators make buying decisions for furniture based on many factors. Cost, durability, functionality, safety, and aesthetics represent just a few of the many practical considerations.

While those issues will always be important, the role that furniture plays in creating positive, high performance learning environments has gained greater recognition in recent years. The sophistication and versatility of today’s furniture makes the benefits of choosing the right solutions—such as facilitating more effective learning outcomes, enhancing teaching techniques, improving acoustics and lighting, and providing attention to student comfort—greater than ever.
Flex Time

At the K-12 level, flexible classrooms represent a growing trend as schools seek ways to optimize space and maximize the learning experience. Designing classrooms with more functional flexibility means that a teacher can easily vary instructional methods to accommodate different learning styles and course topics by simply changing the placement of the furniture. Lightweight, mobile furniture—in marked contrast to traditional furniture—allows teachers to quickly rearrange from a row setting when giving a test or taking attendance, to a circular arrangement for facilitating small group discussions, to collaborative groupings for team project work, to curved arrangements for lectures or presentations.

In addition to switching the configuration and placement of seating based on lesson plans, a flexible classroom puts teachers in closer proximity to students. For example, white boards can be placed on opposite walls to utilize all available space and provide more information than the one board typically found in classrooms. Students rotate their desks to face the board being used, in effect moving students who had been in the back to the front rows. This yields positive results in maintaining attention and interest as well as enhancing the auditory experience for more students. Research conducted by Gary Siebein, Carl Crandell, and Mary Jo Hasell from the University of Florida has shown that students further back than the first two rows may miss as much as 50% of what is being said in the classroom.

To further extend the benefits of a flexible classroom for K-12 students, consideration should be given to the functionality of seats and desks. Selecting models that provide height and depth adjustability—conforming to each student’s size—helps ensure that all students experience a comfortable environment for learning. Anthropometric data shows that children in the 5th and 6th grades, for example, can range in height from four to six feet tall, a huge variance. Just one standard size seat and desk really can’t fit this range of students and therefore could have detrimental effects on a child’s ability to learn.

Flexible classrooms are an effective tool for moving from a “factory” to an “active learning” education model. Active learning emphasizes instilling knowledge, rather than just delivering information. Instead of sitting in organized rows while someone lectures to them, students cluster in collaborative groups to foster teamwork as they work on projects and share ideas. Effective furniture for these environments is student-centric.

Little Things Mean a Lot (of noise)

Another important consideration in creating an optimal classroom environment, acoustics, can be significantly enhanced by proper furniture choices. Poor classroom acoustics adversely impact all students, not just those with hearing loss, speech impairments or learning disabilities. In fact, as many as 15% of school age children may have temporary hearing loss, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The younger the children, the more important acoustics become to effective hearing and learning.

Even low levels of background noise and reverberation make it difficult for many children to hear and comprehend what is being said by teachers and peers. The Technical Committee on Architecture of the Acoustical Society of America reports that many classrooms in the U.S. feature a speech intelligibility rating of 75 percent or less. That means that listeners with normal hearing can understand only 75 percent of the words read from a list.

Teachers report that noise levels have an upward spirally effect. As noise increases, students speak louder and can tend to become unruly as they strive to overcome the volume level. Noises from mechanical systems, adjacent rooms, or the outdoors are the usual sources when it comes to identifying causes of classroom noise. However, the many routine occurrences throughout the day, such as coughing, pencil sharpening, and moving desks, also significantly contribute to creating a difficult auditory environment. Desks and chairs with rollers, which make little or no sound when moved, can make a big difference in reducing ambient noise in the classroom.

Shades of Learning

Proper lighting and color tones serve as additional factors in creating a classroom environment most conducive to effective learning. Increasingly, schools have recognized the importance of daylight in helping students perform better. A famous research project by Heschong Mahone Group was conducted with 9000 students in California, Washington and Colorado. Results showed that children who took their lessons in classrooms with more natural light scored as much as 20% higher on standardized tests in math and 26% better in reading than other students in the same school district in rooms with less light.

Studies in North Carolina, Sweden and Canada have shown similar positive results when students were exposed to natural light. In addition to better test scores, children in rooms with more daylight had fewer absences and behavior problems. Increased natural lighting also was found to allow schools to downsize HVAC systems, saving money and reducing noise. Options for bringing more daylight into the classroom include installing skylights and side windows. East facing windows should be minimal because of the glare created by too much sunlight at severe early morning angles.

While furniture can’t let more natural light into the classroom, it can help maximize daylight that already comes in to the room. Selecting furniture with lighter surfaces, for example, creates ambient light, accentuating incoming natural light and brightening the room. Proper furniture surfaces also can lessen the effects of glare and direct sunlight, and can minimize eye strain that can be caused by high contrast between the worksurface and reading materials.

The right color tones on furniture and furnishings can enhance the teaching and learning experience as well. The impact of color casts have been studied by research organizations such as the Color Marketing Group and Trend Curve. Among the various characteristics associated with different color casts: yellow cast conveys optimism, green cast denotes harmony, brown cast signifies security, and wood grains represent nature.

While many factors influence effective teaching and learning, the physical classroom environment ranks near the top. Thorough consideration must be given to every aspect and element that comprises the classroom space. A holistic approach to the selection of furniture, lighting, sound barriers and other solutions—carefully examining how each works together to create the most effective learning environment—provides students and teachers the best opportunity to perform to their full potential.

Mark Waldecker is K-12 Dealer Development Manager for KI, a manufacturer of furniture and wall system solutions.