Summary HEAD Results
This page summarises the main results, the evidence behind these and much more detail is given via the "reports" page. In particular, the Clever Classrooms report gives many practical suggestions for both designers and teachers.
A short, 2 min video filmed for the Norwegian Education and Training Directorate and summarising the HEAD results is freely available here.
The headline finding is that differences in physical classroom design parameters accounts for 16% of the variation in the learning progress of the children in those spaces over a year.
The viewpoint was taken of a child in a classroom space influenced through their multiple senses leading to an overall experience of the space in their brain. This necessitated the development of a new model of the major design principles at play. So we considered the normal "naturalness" (or comfort) factors, but also included for novel, but important, aspects to do with issues of "individualisation" and an appropriate level of "stimulation". In reverse order, the SIN model. The utility of this novel model, proposed in 2010, has been confirmed by the HEAD results five years later.
Within the SIN framework ten practical design parameters were considered, however, the multi-level statistical analysis resulted in seven emerging as being of especial significance. These are shown in the pie chart opposite, together with their relative influence.
It is interesting to see that the normal naturalness parameters account for about a half of the influence on learning, whilst individualisation and the level of stimulation contribute about a quarter each.
