Toward an understanding of stress in the classroom: the role of individual differences and physical design factors

Abstract

There has been increasing recognition in the educational research literature of the role played by the physical environment in the learning process, including possible contributions of classroom design factors to childhood stress. Most of this research suffers from a failure to adequately consider how intraindividual capacities and abilities may moderate environmental impacts. The present study proposes that the effects of school settings on children can best be understood from an interactionist perspective that assesses the joint influence of individual differences and physical design factors. Individual differences (coronary-prone behavior pattern and arousal-seeking tendency) and environmental factors (classroom density, openness of perimeter, window area, desk arrangement, and the presence or absence of secluded study space) were examined as predictors of four measures representing some of the behavioral and psychological costs of adapting to stress (absenteeism, task inattention, fidgeting behaviors, and cooperativeness). The data analyzed were collected from 110 children, representing 14 elementary school classrooms, via a variety of methods: student interviews, behavioral observation of students in the classroom, teacher questionnaires, and detailed surveys of the physical classroom setting. For the most part, multiple regression analyses showed that predicted interactions between individual differences and design factors made significant contributions to the explained variance in the outcome measures, after statistical adjustment for the main effect contributions and the variance due to the social and instructional context of the classrooms (as measured by the Classroom Environ ment Scale). In addition, scores on the outcome measures were determined by different combinations of person and environmental variables. While methodological shortcomings associated with the use of a nonequiva lent control group design limits the interpretability of the findings, the results provide preliminary empirical support for current transactional models of stress and coping. Furthermore, this study extends the research literature by suggesting that an interactionist formulation may yield significant effects that otherwise may be obscured by only examining the main effects of classroom conditions on learning in children. The interaction of person and environmental variables may provide more explanatory power than is afforded by a separate examination of either person or setting variables alone.