A review of seating arrangements towards the 21st century classroom approach in schools / Norsafiah Norazman ... [et al.]

This article articulates a framework suitable to use when making a decision about student seating arrangement in the classroom at school level as a research aim. The decision makers should establish what are the potential types of seating arrangement? Then evaluate them in terms of its contribution, significance, and impact to the student learning development. The problem of a seating arrangement is usually related to the seating student position selection that is usually decided by teachers or students that can freely choose their own seating. There are three (3) objectives covered in this article; objective 1: to justify the main factors influencing classroom seating arrangement at school building, objective 2: to identify the common patterns of seating arrangement applied for school level and objective 3; to determine the best practice of seating arrangement for 21st century classroom approach at school building. The article articulates a theory of seating arrangement in reference to five (5) common forms of seat arrangement, namely Traditional (columns and rows), Cluster, U-shaped, Stadium, and Runaway. The performance of students might drop especially weak students who are sitting at the back of the classroom if the students are not judiciously arranged. Thus, seating arrangements should be set properly to ensure optimal quality of learning in a classroom. The technique of comparative analysis was used in this study. The findings had shown that cluster seating arrangement is relevant with the 21st century learning approach, which provides more availability of collaborative learning, where it contributes to student-centred learning in a classroom

Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) For Enhancing Satisfaction Level of Comforts in Malaysia’s School Buildings

The physical factors of building performance in a school building must be determined to meet the users’ basic requirement of comfort level. The disruption of physical factors such as ventilation, lighting, or thermal may constitute to reduce the productivity and efficiency among users. Thus, Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is a significant tool to indicate the level of satisfaction and occupants’ comfort in ensuring the current issues mainly related to physical aspects such as indoor environmental quality, space utilization, energy efficiency, and so forth. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to assess the satisfaction level of school building users in Malaysia, including students, teachers, and staff to improve the quality of the indoor environment in a school building as the leading learning space for the future generation. The interview was conducted with 12 participants in determining the satisfaction level of building performance assessment on school buildings. Next, the survey instrument was distributed to 224 respondents in 7 different schools, to evaluate the awareness level of POE in current practice and to analyse the physical criteria to conduct the evaluation standards on school buildings in Malaysia. This study concludes that POE is the most accurate approach to estimate the quality of building performance, especially for school buildings. Also, it should be emphasized as a continuous routine of physical environment evaluation or a periodic assessment of school buildings