Classroom walls are traditionally covered in maps, drawings and paintings.
However, researchers have found that the colourful covering could actually be distracting pupils.
The key to learning effectively, they found, was clear walls.
‘Young children spend a lot of time — usually the whole day — in the same classroom, and we have shown that a classroom’s visual environment can affect how much children learn,’ said Carnegie Mellon’s Anna Fisher, lead author and associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Published in Psychological Science, the study found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed.
The team say the key is for teachers to choose the right decoration.
‘We do not suggest by any means that removing all decoration is the answer to all educational problems,’ Fisher said.
‘Furthermore, additional research is needed to know what effect the classroom visual environment has on children’s attention and learning in real classrooms,’ Fisher said.
‘Therefore, I would suggest that instead of removing all decorations, teachers should consider whether some of their visual displays may be distracting to young children.’
The team also looked at whether children talked among themselves more
‘We were also interested in finding out if the visual displays were removed, whether the children’s attention would shift to another distraction, such as talking to their peers, and if the total amount of time they were distracted would remain the same,’ said Karrie Godwin, who also worked on the study.
