How did changes in classroom organisation affect pupil’s behaviour?
The reviewers found one sound study (Hastings and Schweiso, 1995, study 1) that evaluated the effects of changing the way the children’s tables were arranged. They commented on how the findings of other researchers who had investigated this strategy were inconclusive because they had not taken the ‘novelty effect’ into account: that is, they had not determined which was the significant factor – changing the layout, or the layout itself. The Hastings and Schweiso study evaluated the effects of classroom layout on time on-task with children aged nine to eleven in two classrooms in the UK. Two parallel mixed classes in a junior school took part in the study. To overcome the novelty effect, the researchers chose classes that initially used neither rows nor groups. Both classes were normally arranged in a maze formation. During the experiment, the classes were put into each of the following seating arrangements for two weeks: • one class was seated in rows, then in groups, then back into ro
