Classroom Learning Environments: Assessing and Investigating the Learning Environment

Abstract

Educators, students, and parents often speak about the environment or climate of classrooms and schools because they consider it important in its own right and influential for achieving various educational goals. However, it is rare for educators to include the learning environment in their evaluation procedures, whereas they focus almost exclusively on narrow achievement criteria. Although the learning environment is a subtle concept, the literature cited in this article charts remarkable progress since the 1960s in conceptualizing, assessing, researching, and changing it. Progress and internationalization in the field of learning environment over the past several decades has been facilitated considerably by Learning Environments Research: An International Journal, which began in 1998 and remains the only journal devoted exclusively to this topic. Following a section covering important reviews/overviews of the field, this article is divided into four significant topics that dominate the literature on learning environments. First, the field is rich in terms of economical, valid, and widely used instruments for assessing learning environments. Second, learning-environment assessments frequently have been used as criteria of effectiveness in the evaluation of educational programs and instructional methods, with indicators of classroom climate often differentiating revealingly between educational alternatives even when a variety of outcome measures do not. Third, the most common line of past learning-environment research has been relationships between the learning environment and student outcomes, which consistently suggests that creating positive classroom/school climates improves student outcomes. Fourth, educators have found it useful to use feedback based on their students’ perceptions of actual and preferred climate in action research aimed at improving learning environments.