Part 1: Brief Background On History Of Learning Environment And Major Contributors

Relevant Articles:

1) Classroom Environment Research: Progress And Possibilities - by Jeffrey Dorman
2) Science Learning Environments: Assessment, Effects and Determinants - by Barry Fraser

These two articles give a very detailed overview on the history of the research on learning environments. In the first article by Dorman, he argues that it is important to study the learning environment because one cannot ignore the subtle effects that they have on students' learning, which had been extensively proven to influence academic performances. The learning environment, essentially a human environment in which many factors are at play, influence one another and because of its complex nature, many researchers have come up with validated instruments to measure and assess the different aspects which make up of it, using many surveys which had been subjected to rigourous validation and deemed fit for serious studies.

Historically, learning environment research is well anchored in the works of early psychologists. (Dorman, 2002) There are a number of important contributors to the study of the learning environment and some names will be given below.

1) Kurt Lewin's Field Theory - 1936
Main tenets of this theory:
- Behaviour is defined as a function of person and environment (that is, B-f{P, E}). This means that one’s behavior is related both to one’s personal characteristics and to the social situation in which one finds oneself. The concrete person in a concrete situation can represented mathematically.
- Behaviour is a function of the field that exists at the time the behaviour occurs, analysis begins with the situation as a whole from which are differentiated the component parts, and
- Kurt Lewin also looked to the power of underlying forces (needs) to determine behaviour and, hence, expressed ‘a preference for psychological as opposed to physical or physiological descriptions of the field’ (op. cit.).

Check out this website on Lewin's field theory: http://wilderdom.com/theory/FieldTheory.html

2) Henry Murray's Need- Press Theory - 1938
- Murray, together with some other researchers, extended Lewin's work to develop a need-press theory in which persons are conceptualised in terms of their psychosocial needs and the environment in terms of its press. (Dorman, 2002)
- this simply means that the environment (press) has the power to afffect a person's needs. Take for instance in a school context, the a teacher or a student has her own needs and the environment (press) can either suppress or provide such needs. This theory was later developed to measure the degree of congruence between the person-environment and student outcomes.
- Techincal terms:
a) Alpha press - the environment as observed by an external observer
b) Beta press - the environment as perceived by milieu inhabitants - this perspective exerts greater influence on behaviour because this is what is felt, interpreted and responded by the person. (refer to Dorman's reading)
* Stern, Stein and Bloom later extended these terms (Refer to Fraser's article)
(i) private beta press - the idiosyncratic view that each person has of the environment
(ii) consensual beta press - the shared view that members of a group hold about the environment.

These concepts are important terms in learning environment research. An external observer taking on the role of alpha press may be making highly objective observations, while the individual takes on beta press perspective in a classroom setting, is dependent on the subjective assessment of students and teachers. (Dorman, 2002)

3) Rudolf Moos' theoretical framework - 3 dimensions of human evnrionments (Dorman, 2002)
(i) Relationship - the nature and intensity of personal relationships within the environment
Egs of aspects of learning environment: Helpfulness, Participation, Responsibility
(ii) Personal Development - basic directions along which personal growth and self-enhancement tend to occur
Egs of aspects of learning environment: Stimulation, achievement, efficacy
(iii) System Maintenance and Sytem Change - the extent to which the environment is orderly, clear in expectations, maintains control and is responsive to change
Egs of aspects of learning evironment: Influence, Safety, control

4) Walberg's involvement in the Harvar Project Physics (HPP) - 1960s
- HPP was an experimentally based physics course for secondary school students in the United States in the 1960s. The main rational was to find out if the new approach to the teaching and learning of physics in American classrooms made a difference to classroom climate.
- Walberg's research used students' data of perceptions collected by questionnaire and these data were collected based on observations in classrooms, which focused on summary judgments based on months of immersion in classroom taught by HPP or conventional knowledge-transmission methods. (Dorman, 2002)
- Walberg's works are very important because he showed that students are capable of making valid summary judgments about their classrooms and they could be used in learning environment research.
- Thus, from the 1970s onwards, research on the learning environments centered on the conceptualisation and assessment of classroom environments.