CULTIVATING SPACE   
Lauren Sexton      
How can the design of the classroom support
learning and improve the well-being of students?

I am a recent graduate of the Yale School of Architecture and have been investigating this question through the lense of neuroscience and design. My study has led to the production of a teacher's manual that offers information, research and strategies for creating enriched learning environments that support the well-being of students. I believe that educators should have easy access to this type of research in a digestible and engaging format and hope the manual I create empowers and inspires teachers to make the most of the resources they have, but also advocate for the importance of the classroom environment on student well-being and success. This spring, I am continuing the research and hope to develop the manual to a level that it can be published. I plan to update this site with weekly posts related to the current research discoveries and questions I am working on. If you are interested in getting in touch, viewing more of my work, or supporting the research by completing a teachers survey, please refer to the links below!


 
link to teacher survey

04 The Role of the Classroom
02.19.25

What role does the classroom environment play on a student’s learning? Are there certain relationships between children and their environment that can boost engagement, creativity, memory and well-being? First emphasized by Loris Malaguzzi in his Reggio Emilia approach, how can educators utilize the classroom environment as the third teacher?
In the previous post, Educational Theorists II, I described Loris Malaguzzi’s emphasis on the classroom environment to support learning. While many people may agree that the classroom environment plays some role in a student’s academic experience, I don’t think the significant impact it has on a child’s ability to learn and absorb information is as evident. 
Loris Malaguzzi advocated for the consideration of the classroom environment in his Reggio Emilia schools, describing it as the third teacher - the first two being adults and other children. In a 1992 interview, Malaguzzi states:

“It is necessary to keep in mind how influential the environment is with regard to the affective, cognitive, and linguistic acquisitions. The environment becomes part of the individual so that any response to a request we make of the children or to a request children make of adults is facilitated or obstructed by the environment and its characteristics.” 02

Malaguzzi’s method has had influence across the world. One notable example is the Aurora International School of the Arts in Vietnam who has adopted the Reggio Emilia approach into their pedagogy, while also integrating aspects of Vietnamese culture. The Aurora school’s focus on the classroom environment is evident in the design of their schools and their Image of the Child diagram.06
Image of the Child 05


Aurora school classroom 06



Aurora school classroom 06

The other readings I looked into this week, Minding Bodies 03 and The Third Teacher 01 also discuss the importance of the classroom environment. The authors of both readings introduce interesting and varied ideas on how the human mind and body interact with the physical environment. In Minding Bodies, Susan Hrach describes embodied cognition - how our bodies shape our perception - through three processes: interoception: input from internal organs and tissues
exteroception: external input from the five senses
proprioception: input relating to the body’s spatial position and motion

These three processes all work together to impact the way we learn, but I found myself most drawn to proprioception. The relationship humans have with their surrounding environment does not stop at our fingertips. Our peripersonal space, the space around us that we can physically interact with, has the ability to morph and expand through the use of tools - like a tennis racket, hula hoop, vacuum cleaner, or paintbrush. A memorable example Hrach uses to describe this is the feeling of bumps in a road or the sense a parking garage ceiling height while in a car because your peripersonal space expands to the extents of the tool being used. Interestingly, Hrach goes on to identify collaboration with others and the classroom environment as potential tools for expanding your peripersonal space, thus expanding opportunities for learning. She sums these concepts up by stating:

“Understanding the way the body is involved in making meaning has a number of important implications for teaching and learning practice. First, it should underscore how inextricable and intertwined are our physical environment, sensory perception, and cognitive understanding. Second, and more complicated, it means that even as we can leverage the environment and the senses to deepen learning, we must be on guard against affective realism, or the ways that our internal conditions shape our perception of an external world.”
07


The Third Teacher, a collaborative project including VS Furniture, is a statistics and precedent-driven argument for better quality learning spaces. Throughout the book, the authors offer 79 strategies to improve the learning environment through the design of the classroom. They support their claims through research, examples, and statistics about the current state of education that are often hard to believe. Although it was published 15 years ago, I can imagine many of these jarring statistics have not improved much. Here are a few: 01

       The air is unfit to breathe in nearly 15,000 schools

        Students and faculty typically spend 85% to 90% of their time indoors

        Students with limited classroom daylight were outperformed by those
       with the most natural light by 20% in math and 26% on reading tests

In contrast to Hrach’s description of the classroom as an extension of or tool for the student to aid in learning, the authors of The Third Teacher take Malaguzzi’s stance that the classroom environment is an external factor that supports learning. Many of their strategies focus on the negative impact classrooms can have on a child’s health and well-being, which directly affects their ability to learn and advocate for more value to be placed on classroom conditions. While some of the supporting research behind these three readings varies, there is a consensus that the impact of the classroom environment can not be ignored. Improving the quality of a classroom through natural ventilation and access to nature and engaging the senses through a variety of stimuli will improve students’ well-being, affective state, and boost their ability to learn and absorb information. Whether the classroom is considered a third teacher or a tool, it is evident that it should no longer be considered an empty container for learning, and designers and educators must work together to leverage it as an essential component to the education of children.
© Carolyn Tam 08





image and reference links

  1. Cannon Design; VS Furniture; Bruce Mau Design. The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning. New York: Abrams, 2010 
  2. Edwards, Carolyn P., et al. The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation. Praeger, 2012
  3. Hrach, Susan. Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning. West Virginia University Press, 2021
  4. https://images.app.goo.gl/99eqhpnWom9gyTQh7
  5. https://issuu.com/auroraschoolvn/docs/orientation_guide_book_2024-single_page
  6. https://www.auroraschool.vn/
  7. https://pin.it/6A7YYWuNs
  8. Tam, Carolyn. The Third Teacher: Architecture as enabler of Active Learning. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022
YSOA SP25 Independent Study