London - Classroom walls covered in artwork, maps and examples of school work could damage children’s education, according to research published recently.
Experts say primary school pupils are likely to be distracted from their work by material emblazoned across their classroom walls.
Psychologists looked at whether classroom displays affected children’s ability to maintain focus during instruction and to learn the lesson content.
They found that those in heavily decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time away from their tasks and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed.
Professor Anna Fisher, who led the study at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said: “Young children spend a lot of time – usually the whole day – in the same classroom.
“We have shown that a classroom’s visual environment can affect how much children learn.”
For the study, 24 primary school children were placed in laboratory classrooms for six introductory science lessons on topics with which they were unfamiliar.
Three lessons were taught in a heavily decorated classroom and three were given in a sparse classroom. While children learned in both classroom types, they learned more when the room was of a more spartan design.
Children scored an average of 55 percent in tests in the plain classroom, compared to 42 percent in the decorated room.
Researchers said the time children spent “off-task” was higher in the decorated classroom (38.6 percent of their time) than in the sparse classroom (28.4 percent).
Professor Fisher said the researchers were not suggesting that bare classrooms were the answer to all educational problems.
“Additional research is needed to know what effect the classroom visual environment has on children’s attention and learning in real classrooms,” she said.
“I would suggest that instead of removing all decorations, teachers should consider whether some of their displays may be distracting.”
The researchers hope their findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, lead to further studies into developing guidelines on the design of classrooms.- Daily Mail