Where Environmental Psychology Meets Teaching: Creating Preferred Classroom Environments

Who among us has never taken a course that, despite its instructor's best efforts, creates deep stress for the student not because the content is inherently difficult but rather because the student expends an inordinate amount of effort on determining what the instructor expects? Unclear assignments, secret due dates, and class time that lacks apparent structure cause students to become antsy at best and hostile in the worst cases. When viewed through the lens of how humans evolved to survive 'n thrive, this makes absolute sense. We humans evolved to process and participate in spatial environments. Long before the concept of zero or the social contract arose, humans depended on their way-finding abilities to establish territory, venture off on the hunt, and return home without becoming distracted from scanning for dangers. We came to prefer environments that are easily navigable and allow for fast, distraction-free information processing.

For the most part, the hunt is over, and the threats have abated. We can afford to get distracted once in a while without fearing a wolf attack. Nevertheless, our brain has kept intact its need for environments that allow for distraction-free navigability. This is one of the reasons why students have such unfavorable reactions to disorganized and inefficient classes; the instinct for self-preservation kicks in when a feeling of being "lost" does. To the subconscious, not knowing when that final paper is due or what it's supposed to be about is highly similar to being stranded in a shadowy, unknown physical environment that may or may not harbor angry tigers in the shade. 

In With People in Mind: Design and Management of Everyday Nature, environmental psychologists Rachel Kaplan, Stephen Kaplan, and Robert L. Ryan offer the argument that humans, as information processors, are at their most effective in environments that allow for understanding and exploration, both in the present and in the future. Their Environmental Preference Matrix enables a user to analyze how preferable a physical environment is based on four qualities: its coherence, its legibility, its complexity, and its mystery.

Environmental Preference Matrix:

	Understanding	Exploration
2-D (The Present)	Coherence	Complexity
3-D (The Future)	Legibility	Mystery

Here are some brief definitions of each element that constitutes a preferred environment:

• Coherence: When the environment is organized and ordered from a person's stationary perspective, it is coherent. Regions, areas, and objects are distinct and allow for rapid understanding of the immediate physical environment.
• Legibility: An environment is legible when a person moving through the environment can easily orient himself or herself in terms of place by way of the presence of landmarks or other defining features of the landscape. 
• Complexity: An environment is complex if it is rich in information from a stationary perspective. One example of a complex environment is a city thoroughfare; there is much information to take in and much to explore. An example of a non-complex environment is an open field or a homogeneous forest. Exploration in these environments is less appealing because, said simply, there's less to explore.
• Mystery: An environment has a quality of mystery when it promises its navigator more information if he or she should continue to move throughout the environment. A curving path is a quality example of an environmental component that promises such further information as would come with exploration. Notably, when the potential for further information is completely obscured, there is no quality of mystery. Kaplan, Kaplan & Ryan (1998) emphasize the notion that mystery is a "particularly effective factor in making a scene highly favored" (p. 16). 

To illustrate, here's an example of a preferred environment:

The environment pictured is coherent (organized), legible (navigable), complex (information-rich), and a little mysterious (what's behind that crest of trees? What's at the top of those mountains?)

And here's an example of a non-preferred environment:

What a mess. The only thing this environment has by way of criteria for preference is complexity.

This is all well and good and makes much sense as a method of organizing the general factors that cause humans to prefer some environments over others. In addition, I see an immense applicability of these principles to the design of effective courses and daily instruction.

Consider an implication for each component of a highly preferred environment:

• Coherence: Students who can understand the current topic of learning and where it stands in context with a larger subject area will fare better than those who cannot. Likewise, students who understand what the teacher's current expectation of their action is feel more secure in their ability to complete that action.
• Legibility: Students who understand what's coming in both the rest of the day and the rest of the course as a whole will exert less effort in trying to understand such progressions than those who do not. The presence of daily agendas and well organized course syllabi create environments that are legible to students.
• Complexity: We've learned from Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development that students who are confronted with information that's too simple and boring will feel little or no motivation to explore it. The topics, questions, and assignments that we teachers give to students must be rich in information for students to want to explore it.
• Mystery: We can provide students with the promise of further information given that there is further exploration by creating essential questions and course aims of deep substance and relevance. Students to whom these questions and aims appeal will feel comfortable in doing the digging required for further elucidation of them.

These four components of preferred environments apply to physical environments and seem to apply to conceptual environments as well. The applicability of the Environmental Preference Matrix is seemingly limitless; one can imagine its use in evaluating texts and their considerateness, physical classroom environments, and complex assignments.

As teachers, we are charged with creating environments that should maximize students' comfort and ability to learn. Understanding and applying some of the theory underlying why humans prefer some environments over others can help us to ensure that our classes and classrooms work in ways that encourage an individual's ability to process information.

Loggin' Some Bloggin'

One of our recent responsibilities for our EDUC 504: Teaching with Technology course was to engage in some discourse with established edubloggers by way of commenting on a post of theirs. I found this to be, on one hand, a simple matter; we SecMACers have been talking in similar ways with our classmates through each others' own blogs. In this way, I felt prepared. On the other hand, I found this task to be a little daunting, primarily for the reason that I feel as though I'm less qualified than I want to be for the purpose of striking up conversation with those who are established in the field. That being said, I can see the immense value of this assignment. Not only was it a great opportunity to offer our own thoughts to the blogosphere -- it was also a terrific learning opportunity.

I commented on two bloggers' posts. The first post was from Bill Ferriter on his blog The Tempered Radical, which is hosted by the Center for Teaching Quality. In "New Slide: Being Responsible for Teaching the Bored", Ferriter laments the lack of curricular time available for differentiating instruction to appeal to students' passions and interests. The persistence required of students to succeed, he says, is a "whole heck of a lot easier for people who are pursuing things that they are passionate about." He asks the question of whether teachers who are restricted by standards and other curricular demands are totally out of luck if they want to bring interesting, relevant instruction to their students. I responded to this question that I don't think teachers of many subjects are unable to teach this material in a way that brings metacognitive clarity and a new-found perspective. I did recognize the fact that, as a teacher of English, I'm especially (guiltily) lucky to be able to integrate meaningful questions into my subject's curriculum. In his response to me, Ferriter argued that his subject was, indeed, not like English in that it wasn't skills-based but rather facts-based, and that the standardized tests on it reflect this. I agreed and offered support for his recommendation that skills-based curricula for all subjects should be the norm.

The second blog post I responded to was on Dr. Frank LaBanca's blog, In Search of Scientific Creativity. In "Technology changes 'note taking'", Dr. LaBanca admits his puzzlement with teachers who institute no-tolerance bans on students' cell phone use in class. He himself has seen his graduate students use tablets and cell phones to take pictures of material on the SmartBoard. His stance reflects a healthy balance toward technology use in the classroom: "I think the important consideration is that when technology is used to ENHANCE learning, that’s a good thing, but when technology DISTRACTS you from learning, that’s the bad thing." I commented on his blog that I agreed completely, saying that "banning mobile devices outright does our students a disservice if they graduate and move on to a college or employer who doesn’t have such explicitly stated policies. If our students don’t understand why succumbing to the temptation of a text is not an optimal strategy for learning, working, or general self-betterment, then they’re not on the best path." Another commenter, Ray, later agreed with us both: 'Right on Mike and Matt! My school is a “technology free zone” as by district policy. It needs to go. It does nothing but hamper learning for digital natives and increase the digital divide for some of the most needy learners.' Participating in this conversation was very affirming.

The learning experience that this assignment offered was personal and significant. From Bill Ferriter I gained a new sense of some key traits of skills-based education; I find that a recommendation for skills-based curricula falls strongly in line with my belief that, given the newly instantaneous trove of data widely available via the internet, we owe it to our students to teach them not the data itself but how to find it, read it, apply it, evaluate it, and create it. From Dr. Frank LaBanca, I developed a more pointed opinion on how teachers should support students' use of cell phones for the purpose of learning. From them both, I learned that, on the internet, the only qualifications one needs to have an effective, horizon-broadening professional discussion are an ability to offer opinions respectfully and thoughtfully, and a willingness to learn from those who have been furthering their craft for years.