School

Altenburger studied how students experience safety-related design features at their schools.  She shares that her “ethnographic case study examines how a school building designed to promote both student engagement and safety supports school practices that prioritize minimizing risk. . . . Student voices focus on the connotations of a tall fence and alarmed doors that deny the teenagers' access to exterior circulation and social spaces. The author found educators embracing crime prevention through environmental design strategies to enforce a closed campus policy.

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. . .

Bhat and associates evaluated the effects of standing on cognitive performance. They report that “The present study investigated the effects of attending lectures in sitting and standing postures on executive function of young adults. . . .  Attending a lecture in a standing posture was found to improve executive function (response inhibition) measured with reaction times (for incongruent stimuli) and ERPs [event related potentials]. . .  Standing might improve executive function compared to sitting among young adults in a simulated lecture 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. . . .

Faur and Laursen link classroom seat locations and friendships via a study whose findings are consistent with much prior research.  Study participants were in grades 3-5.  The researchers found that “students sitting next to or nearby one another were more likely to . . . be involved in reciprocated friendships than students seated elsewhere in the classroom. Longitudinal analyses indicated that classroom seating proximity was associated with the formation of new friendships. . . . Seat assignments were not random.