Day-to-day life frequently exposes us to various physical and psychological influences that affect our well-being, both in a positive and negative way. These factors are present daily in our lives, including educational establishments, and its impact is felt not only by students, but also by teachers and other school employees. The schools’ role as a place of education for students and a place of employment for teachers, is to grant a friendly, safe and healthy environment. It is of high importance that the environmental factors are as pleasant as possible and, foremost, unharmful.
The following thesis explores factors that are present in natural science classrooms and have a positive effect of the well-being of students and teachers.
The thesis consists of two parts: a theoretical and an empirical part.
The theoretical part describes specific standards and norms, valid for primary schools, in particular natural science classrooms. The thesis firstly focuses on different human reactions to their environment, followed by a description of all five senses that enable perception of factors in classrooms, such as noise, lighting, ventilation, air temperature, furnishing and learning facility ground plan. Even though color is not represented as a factor in Navodila za graditev osnovnih šol v Republiki Sloveniji (Manual for Construction of School Buildings of the Republic of Slovenia), it is generally acknowledged that it has an impact on the general well-being and consequently on the motivation of the class participants. The theoretical part as a whole is discussed in relation to the Slovenian curriculum and public education reform.
The empirical part conducts a research of learning efficiency, motivation and general well-being of students in two separate natural science classrooms in an existing Primary School. The research is leaned on comparison of students’ opinions, their observations, feelings and motivation while having lessons in the two different settings. This part of the thesis also presents Primary School in general, its position, ground plan and surrounding. The data was compared to the manual Navodila za graditev osnovnih šol v Republiki Sloveniji. The empirical part also includes interviews with two natural science teachers who work in the presented school.
Results have shown that the students feel equally well in both natural science classrooms; however, the fact that classroom 2 has displayed live animals makes it more popular than classroom 1. The research reflects the students’ opinion that the displayed animals do not influence their learning efficiency during lessons; concurrently they are able to sense disruptive factors that affect their concentration, well-being and learning efficiency. Since the initial conclusion of the thesis was unsatisfactory, natural science lessons were conducted in several other random chosen classrooms of the School. A new questionnaire has been designed in order to asses other disruptive factors in each individual classroom, whether the students were able to perceive these factors and how the factors influenced the students. Results have shown that the majority of students are not only aware of disruptive factors in the classroom, but are also able to link them to their emotional state. Students were furthermore able to comprehend that disruptive factors affect the change of their emotional well-being and their concentration. Out of the factors students evaluated as the most disruptive to be noise, poorly ventilated classrooms, uncomfortable temperature, unpleasant odour, poor lighting and desk arrangement. Opinions projected by teachers stated that currently available manuals do not provide us with enough guidelines on efficient construction of primary schools.
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