a*****g
发帖数: 19398 | 1 Imagine a kindergarten classroom. Picture the vividly colored scalloped
borders on the walls, the dancing letters, maybe some charming cartoon
barnyard animals holding up “Welcome to School!” signs.
That bright, cheery look has become a familiar sight in classrooms across
the country, one that has only grown over the last few decades, fed by the
proliferation of educational supply stores. But to what effect?
A new study looked at whether such classrooms encourage, or actually
distract from, learning. The study, one of the first to examine how the look
of these walls affects young students, found that when kindergartners were
taught in a highly decorated classroom, they were more distracted, their
gazes more likely to wander off task, and their test scores lower than when
they were taught in a room that was comparatively spartan.
The researchers, from Carnegie Mellon University, did not conclude that
kindergartners, who spend most of the day in one room, should be taught in
an austere environment. But they urged educators to establish standards.
“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 the early years of school, children must learn to direct their attention
and concentrate on a task. As they grow older, their focus improves. Sixth
graders, for example, can tune out extraneous stimuli far more readily than
preschoolers, the study’s authors noted.
But could information-dense kindergarten classroom walls, intended to
inspire children, instead be overwhelming? Could all that elaborate décor
impede learning? Some experts think so.
“I want to throw myself over those scalloped borders and cute cartoon stuff
and scream to teachers, ‘Don’t buy this, it’s visually damaging for
children!’ ” said Patricia Tarr, an associate professor at the University
of Calgary who researches early childhood education and art education, and
was not involved in the study.
Dr. Tarr has long railed against the notion of “decorating” a classroom.
In a 2004 paper called “Consider the Walls,” published in Young Children,
the journal for the National Association for the Education of Young Children
, she argued that classrooms could become so cluttered with commercial
posters and mobiles that they obscured the children’s own drawings and
writings, posing special challenges to any child with attention deficits.
For the new study, 24 kindergartners were taught in two classroom settings:
one unadorned, the other festooned with commercial materials like posters
and maps, as well as the children’s artwork. The children sat on carpet
squares in a semicircle facing the teacher, who read aloud from a picture
book. They took six five- to seven-minute science lessons over two weeks on
topics such as plate tectonics, the solar system and bugs. After each lesson
, the children took multiple-choice picture tests. The lessons were
videotaped, to monitor how often the children’s gazes wandered.
In the austere classroom, the kindergartners — age-appropriately wriggly
and restless — were inclined to be distracted by others, or even themselves
. But in the decorated one, the visuals competed with the teacher for their
attention. The children spent far more time off-task in the decorated
classroom than in the plain one, and their test scores were also lower.
The researchers acknowledged that their study looked only at one small group
of kindergartners, and that its results may not apply to older children.
Moreover, the students sat in the rooms for one lesson at a time, rather
than a full school day.
The next step, said Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman, an educational psychologist at the
University of Virginia who was not involved in the study, would be to
replicate the same experiment, but in classrooms where children spent the
entire day.
She noted that relatively little had been written about how to make
effective use of classroom walls. But she said that if young children were
“seeing so much at once, they cannot independently differentiate what is
important; they may tune out the teacher.”
Yet teachers sometimes feel compelled to make those walls attractive, she
said, “because they know parents are coming to an open house night, and
parents expect to see a decorated classroom.”
Some educators have resisted the trend toward the ever-more embellished
classroom. Montessori schools have long emphasized a calmer, understated
look. Individual teachers have eschewed the pricey trend, too.
“We used to paper our walls from floor to ceiling, covering them 100
percent,” said Ingrid Boydston, a kindergarten teacher at Bridgeport
Elementary School in Santa Clarita, Calif.
Now Mrs. Boydston, a California teacher of the year in 1999, encourages
teachers to let wall displays grow from the children’s experiences. She
sees educational value in deliberately leaving areas blank under signs that
might say “Watch This Space!” For a recent lesson about the artist Monet,
she stood in front of a white board, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and
smock and speaking in a French accent. Afterward, she filled the board with
key words that her 27 young students remembered from her talk. Then the
children went to the room’s paint center, where they went to work with
cotton swabs.
Finally, it was time to adorn a blank wall. Mrs. Boydston filled it with
artwork: the children’s Monets, not Claude’s. | a*****g
发帖数: 19398 | 2 摘要——孩子周围的环境装饰太花哨，副作用，不利影响。
look
were
【在 a*****g 的大作中提到】
: Imagine a kindergarten classroom. Picture the vividly colored scalloped
: borders on the walls, the dancing letters, maybe some charming cartoon
: barnyard animals holding up “Welcome to School!” signs.
: That bright, cheery look has become a familiar sight in classrooms across
: the country, one that has only grown over the last few decades, fed by the
: proliferation of educational supply stores. But to what effect?
: A new study looked at whether such classrooms encourage, or actually
: distract from, learning. The study, one of the first to examine how the look
: of these walls affects young students, found that when kindergartners were
: taught in a highly decorated classroom, they were more distracted, their
| d**********h
发帖数: 2795 | 3 我觉得这是第一句话，但是不是重点。
我理解的文章主题是:
我们不要一面已经贴满了的墙。来孩子们，我们一起来贴满这面墙。
这让我想起以前说的中外地图。咱就直说西方地图，尤其是海图，大片的留白，这就告
诉所有的观者:来，填上它。
【在 a*****g 的大作中提到】
: 摘要——孩子周围的环境装饰太花哨，副作用，不利影响。
:
: look
: were
| a*****g
发帖数: 19398 | 4 如果文章的入口谈论墙是不是干扰学习，
出口谈论大家一起来贴满墙
那么中间的文章就不好写了，因为控制的因素无端多了几个，更难有什么研究结果了。
【在 d**********h 的大作中提到】
: 我觉得这是第一句话，但是不是重点。
: 我理解的文章主题是:
: 我们不要一面已经贴满了的墙。来孩子们，我们一起来贴满这面墙。
: 这让我想起以前说的中外地图。咱就直说西方地图，尤其是海图，大片的留白，这就告
: 诉所有的观者:来，填上它。
| k**n
发帖数: 6198 | 5 The fundamental fault of that study, from reading what you pasted here, is
the time span of the teaching effect in thta colorful room.
My kindergaten daughter's colorful room has never been changed for the whole
year with the same decorations. The decoration, proven to be distracting in
that control study, has not been proven to be as distracting as a fresh new
decoration.
Another typical example is that my daughter's new play-date always liked the
hug Elsa on the wall in her room. But to her, the monster Elsa is none
existence now.
look
were
【在 a*****g 的大作中提到】
: Imagine a kindergarten classroom. Picture the vividly colored scalloped
: borders on the walls, the dancing letters, maybe some charming cartoon
: barnyard animals holding up “Welcome to School!” signs.
: That bright, cheery look has become a familiar sight in classrooms across
: the country, one that has only grown over the last few decades, fed by the
: proliferation of educational supply stores. But to what effect?
: A new study looked at whether such classrooms encourage, or actually
: distract from, learning. The study, one of the first to examine how the look
: of these walls affects young students, found that when kindergartners were
: taught in a highly decorated classroom, they were more distracted, their
| C*********X
发帖数: 10518 | 6 关键问题从不表态的虚伪的大妈，你可以安了。都美国公民了，还来和这里的F2/H4混
什么混？不丢人吗？美国白人不理你吗？Peter Liang 的问题不表态了？？不表态为
什么又自吹自己当过jury。，。月光对你的把脉居然如此之精准，我宁可和月光这种恶
人来往也不会鸟你这种__。
转军版和其它版笑你！，
whole
in
new
the
【在 k**n 的大作中提到】
: The fundamental fault of that study, from reading what you pasted here, is
: the time span of the teaching effect in thta colorful room.
: My kindergaten daughter's colorful room has never been changed for the whole
: year with the same decorations. The decoration, proven to be distracting in
: that control study, has not been proven to be as distracting as a fresh new
: decoration.
: Another typical example is that my daughter's new play-date always liked the
: hug Elsa on the wall in her room. But to her, the monster Elsa is none
: existence now.
:
|
|
