What We Put on Our Classroom Walls Matters!

New York Times Article - Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom

By: Kyleigh Pharris, EC-SEAT Scholar

As a certified preschool through third grade educator and a special education kindergarten intern, I am constantly in search of new research that will assist me in creating a classroom environment that is respectful to young learners.

Stumbling upon The New York Times blog article Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom by Jan Hoffman, really got me thinking about what our classroom environments really say to children. In the article, Hoffman describes a study conducted with 24 kindergarten children through the Carnegie Mellon University. To broadly sum up the findings in the study, researchers discovered that classroom walls that were highly decorated in teacher bought posters of bright colors and cartoon characters, meant to inspire children to learn, really distracted them from learning.

The research supports austere classroom aesthetics for young learners, because at this stage in development it is challenging for children to ignore what is on the walls to focus on the social interactions within the classroom. Hoffman included that the study found young children in the austere classroom had higher test scores and less frequency of distractibility throughout their day.

“So many things affect academic outcomes that are not under our control,” said Anna V. Fisher, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon and the lead author of the study, which was published in Psychological Science. “But the classroom’s visual environment is under the direct control of the teachers. They’re trying their best in the absence of empirically validated guidelines.”

In discussing this article on the EC-SEAT blog I am hopeful that more educators will research further into the selection of what goes on their classroom walls. Hopefully this will begin the conversation to rethink classroom aesthetics and create an environment that is respectful for young learners.

Kyleigh is an intern in a kindergarten classroom and coordinates Seacoast Reads on the UNH campus in Morrill Hall. Becoming a teacher has always been a strong passion for her, and now she feels even more prepared to teach children of varying abilities through the EC-SEAT program! In the future she hopes to use her Assistive Technology certification to assist young learners in their learning journey.