Optimize Learning Outcomes

Rahal, Wells, and Evan’s research confirms the value of locating schools in greenspaces.  The investigators report that they “examined the [relationship between] school greenspace . . . and a standard literacy enrichment program . . . over a one-year period for a large sample of ethnic minority (95%) elementary school children . . . attending predominantly low-income schools . . . throughout the state of California. . . .

A team from UCLA has confirmed that, to some extent, our knowledge is linked to place; their work is published in Science of Learning.  A UCLA press release reports that “Wearing VR headsets, participants explored one of two environments — a fantasy fairyland or a science fiction landscape — where they could click to learn the Swahili or Chinyanja names for the objects they encountered. Some participants learned both languages in the same VR environment; others learned one language in each environment. . .

Johnson and Jabbari link the overt presence of school security systems to lower academic performance.  Their findings indicate that “In response to the continued reoccurrence of school shootings, policymakers have increased surveillance measures to ensure safer learning environments. . . . these surveillance measures may have increased the capacity of schools to identify and punish students for more common and less serious offenses, which may negatively impact the learning environment. . .

Van der Groen and colleagues link sensory experiences and learning outcomes.  They share that “Transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) is a non-invasive electrical brain stimulation method that is increasingly employed in studies of human brain function and behavior, in health and disease. tRNS is effective in modulating perception acutely and can improve learning. . . .