Learning Environment
E. Zarghami; S. M. Behrooz
Abstract
Background and Objective: Interdisciplinary scientific perspectives define learning as part of the individual’s process of shaping physiology, morphology and behavior within the boundary of organism’s biological nature, to adjust the environment, which in premodren childhood occurs through ...
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Background and Objective: Interdisciplinary scientific perspectives define learning as part of the individual’s process of shaping physiology, morphology and behavior within the boundary of organism’s biological nature, to adjust the environment, which in premodren childhood occurs through play, exploration and participation in socially meaningful contexts over an extended period of immaturity. This type of learning has become subordinate to the official schooling these days.In the past, children spent most of their free time outdoors; this time was spent on activities in informal spaces, without control and in other words, unstructured. These spaces in ancestral life (before the advent of agriculture and settling down) were of ancestral nature and then the neighborhood environment, that were an important place for children to play throughout history and around the world. However, children today spend most of their free time indoors, and most of their outdoor time on scheduled and structured activities. This routine has led to physical and emotional problems such as body imbalance, type 2 diabetes, obesity and a sense of loneliness. The development of brain neural system occurs in the early years of childhood through movement and stimulation, indicating the importance of children's experiences, activities, and daily interactions for their physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of children's natural learning opportunities in environments with varying degrees of urbanization.Methods: By means of Gibson’s affordances concept, using the affordance taxonomy of Heft-Kytta on 10–12-year-old children in metropolitan, urban, semi-urban/rural and rural communities, through questionnaires and Analysis of variance in 2018.Findings: Significant differences were observed among the communities in affordance availability, in the level of affordances actualization, in the distribution of affordances within the categories of the taxonomy, and also the location of the affordances, whether they were at home, in the yard, in immediate surroundings or elsewhere.Conclusion:Children's natural and everyday learning occurs through environmental provision. In the environments of human’s past history, children had a great deal of freedom to use existing natural elements and features, while intertwined in the daily social and work relationships of their neighborhood. However, in today's urbanized environments, both children's freedom has diminished, and those elements and natural features have become inaccessible (or, in other words, carefully removed from everyday life), and the environment of social and work interactions has distanced them from their place of residence. The results of this study testified to the severity of these three events, especially in metropolitan areas. This decrease was especially evident for exercise equipment, detachable hand objects, slippery, climbing, hanging, and height-changing features. Based on the findings and their interpretations, it is suggested that children have adequate access to messy spaces, various spatial fixed and loose elements, to have learning chances.
Learning Environment
F. Ebrahimzadeh; Fatemeh Mehdizadeh Saradj; S. Norouzian Maleki; S. Piri
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Changes in lifestyle have led to the gradual disconnection of children from nature and open spaces and schools are one of the most important spaces for re-establishing this connection; because it is the second place where children spend a lot of time after home and most ...
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Background and Objectives: Changes in lifestyle have led to the gradual disconnection of children from nature and open spaces and schools are one of the most important spaces for re-establishing this connection; because it is the second place where children spend a lot of time after home and most of the children's daily physical activities are done during the day. The present study was aimed at explaining the characteristics of school outdoor spaces to improve the children’s relaxation and learning. Hence, after analyzing the information obtained from previous studies, the list of effective criteria to increase children’s sense of attachment to the open spaces of schools was proposed. The study of the research background and the compilation of theoretical foundations were done in two parts: At first, by combining different research studies on the subject of place attachment, the dimensions of place attachment and the factors affecting it., the researchers have tried to deal with the relationship between these factors both with each other and with the issue of architecture in order to determine the effective factors in creating place attachment in the field of architecture., Afterwards, the background of research in the field of children and outdoor space was examined and the effective variables in creating place attachment were identified. Then, these initial criteria were checked on the basis of the perspective of the experts in architecture. Methods: To achieve the research purpose and find the relationship between the effective factors in place attachment with the extracted variables, the qualitative-quantitative system, the method of content analysis and Delphi technique were used.Therefore, in order to achieve a more comprehensive result and a combination of the quantitative and qualitative content, after searching for sources and collecting information, the content analysis method was used so that the raw data and the existing components can be categorized on an orderly basis. Then, to confirm the framework and the variables extracted by a group of experts in the field of architecture, a questionnaire based on Likert scale was used. The data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed by factor analysis using the SPSS software. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The adequacy of the sample size was also assessed using the KMO statistic and Bartlett’s significance level. Findings: The results showed that from the perspective of the experts, the independent variables can be classified into five groups of influential factors on the basis of the answers of the respondents. According to the definitions of attachment factors in the research background and the findings of the statistical test, the obtained variables were named. Hence, the variables such as the environmental mobility, space flexibility and cozy corners under (interactive factors), familiar environment, the study period, the child’s gender and culture-economic class (individual factors), dimensions of the open space, physical comfort of the environment, spatial diversity and spatial perception (physical factors), child participation, natural elements of the environment, safety and sense of security (socio-group factors) and playfulness, stimulation of the environment and its color and texture subset (activity factors) were classified. Conclusion: Based on the research findings, the most important criteria for increasing the child's sense of attachment to the open space of schools were classified into five main factors (interactive, individual, physical, socio-group and activity) and 17 variables.Moreover, strategies along with the above indicators in relation to school design have been proposed so that besides creating an environment that meets the demands of students, opportunities for children to participate can also be provided and, thus, the possibility.
Electronic learning- virtual
Gh.R. Aslani; S.A. Azimi; N. Soleimani
Abstract
Background and Objective:In recent decades, the use of new information and communication technologies around the world has grown rapidly. The proliferation of personal computers, mobile phones or Android phones, and the easy access to the Internet provided by telephone operators have changed the lives ...
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Background and Objective:In recent decades, the use of new information and communication technologies around the world has grown rapidly. The proliferation of personal computers, mobile phones or Android phones, and the easy access to the Internet provided by telephone operators have changed the lives of millions of people. These changes have directly and indirectly affected people's behaviors and habits, and even their cognitive and mental characteristics. As the use of the Internet by children and adolescents increases, there are concerns about their online safety. Providing a safe environment requires an in-depth understanding of the types of risks of the online environment, as well as effective solutions to reduce these risks. The issue of cyberspace abuses and the irreparable damage that this environment can do to personality and social image is a matter of consideration, the prevention of which is most of all the responsibility of the educational organizations, and particularly the family. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between parental supervisory styles and internet safety of children among male and female students of high school. Methods: Descriptive correlational (structural equation modeling) method was used at this study. All the second grade students of high school in Dezful and their parents in the academic year of 2017-2018 were statistical population of this study. According to the sample size, 375 people were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan's tables. Stratified sampling method and random cluster sampling were used for sampling. Two standard questionnaires of determining parental supervisory styles and a researcher-made questionnaire of checking the internet safety of children on a Likert scale were used to collect data. Frequency distribution, mean, Pearson correlation coefficient, regression and structural equation model test were used to analyze the data. Findings: The results showed that there is a significant difference between the parenting styles and the level of internet safety of children. Parents' cordial behavior with their children and their proper control give more confidence among family members. The child who feels such a climate feels safe in expressing his Internet needs, the things that are encountered in using the internet, as well as the questions and problems encountered when using the internet will be more comfortable to discuss these issues with parent. Conclusion: The results show that the highest Internet security of children is observed in the authoritarian regulatory style, followed by the authoritarian style and the negligent style; while the lowest internet security is observed in the non-interfering style. The results also showed that there was a significant relationship between parental supervision style and parental Internet security. Parents' sincere behavior and their proper control provide more trust among family members. The child who feels this atmosphere feel more secure and comfortable to express their needs about the Internet, the events that occur in using the Internet, and the questions and problems that they have while using the Internet. Parents with a friendly style and proper control have taken the necessary precautions to use the Internet safely and avoid serious risks. They have clearly set their own rules and expectations for children to use the Internet. And children are aware that they must respect these rules and expectations in order to be loved by their parents. In fact, this group of parents are not far behind their children in issues such as Internet literacy and media literacy, and they know and practice the etiquette of dealing with their children when they use the Internet.
Learning Environment
N. Ahmadpour Samani; A. Farsi Mohammadipour; S.M. Behrooz
Abstract
Background and Objective: Addressing the issue of identifying elements of the nature are important to children and increase children's creativity. In such a way that these elements can be presented in a general framework so that designers and architects can rely on them, the most important concepts and ...
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Background and Objective: Addressing the issue of identifying elements of the nature are important to children and increase children's creativity. In such a way that these elements can be presented in a general framework so that designers and architects can rely on them, the most important concepts and items needed in the design, to consider these spaces and apply them. Of course, it should be noted that several environmental factors affect creativity. However, in this study, an attempt is made to identify the factors that have the most impact, so that the needs of children can be met in accordance with their activities and a general framework for designing children's spaces can be proposed. The main difference between this research and other researches is in prioritizing the effective factors in nature from the children's point of view and its effect on creativity and then presenting the results in the form of an overall design framework. Various research has been done on this subject, but in a one-dimensional way and in them only one factor is mentioned, such as the effect of creativity on learning, but none of them presents the effect of nature's role in increasing creativity. The purpose of this research is to determine which natural elements are important from children’s points of view and whether the use and presence of elements are possible in educational locations. This research seeks to find approaches to design school yards based on children’s points of view with regard to the role of nature in their education. Methods: The research method used in this qualitative study is content analysis. Based on the nature of the subject, a questionnaire and the image technique were used as the main method of data collection. The structure of the questionnaire is based on the measures and criteria derived from the subject literature and designed based on Likert scale. In the first stage, 120 questionnaires were provided to children of 7-12 age in the case study. Results of the questionnaires were obtained. To ensure that the results of the questionnaires are expanded, the researcher, in the second phase, provided some pictures relevant to questionnaires, so that the children could respond to questions based on their visual preferences. The researcher then obtained results based on visual content analysis. Findings: It was discovered that these two instruments of measurement are in line with each other and are appropriate to the environmental factors affecting children. Finally, a framework for organizing the school yard is presented. Conclusion: By creating an appropriate, responsive and purposeful framework in design, we can address the main goal of the research, which is to identify the effective factors in nature from the children's point of view by increasing their creativity, and finally, an appropriate framework by considering these factors to organize the space of the school yard. The necessity of presenting the framework can be expressed in such a way that the weakening of children's connection with outside the classroom is harmful for the child, on the other hand, an intellectual movement moves towards learning outdoors. The presence of natural elements or the same nature has a positive effect on children's creativity, discovers and flourishes the latent talent in children and creates a suitable environment for a bright future for children.
Curriculum Planning
M. Khakzand; S. Babaei
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to identify the effectiveness factors in the design of open space in educational centers for children and its relationship to learning. Because learning and convey the meaning is an inseparable part in every educational process, accordingly, the authors tried to introduce ...
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The main purpose of this study was to identify the effectiveness factors in the design of open space in educational centers for children and its relationship to learning. Because learning and convey the meaning is an inseparable part in every educational process, accordingly, the authors tried to introduce the theory which named (Seven Cs including: C1: character, C2: context, C3: connectivity, C4: change, C5: chance, C6: clarity, C7: challenge). The authors believe that using this method can provide a favorable environment and adaptable with the educational goals, i.e. increasing the quality of learning and efficiencies for the children. The method used in this research is directed-content-analysis which aims is a trying to develop a theory for greater efficiency. This theory results of the several year efforts by the experimental and survey method in Canada. Initially, the resources evaluated and analyzed, then extracted the significant factors in children's environment. Consequently, these factors are measured within (SevenCs) and finding showed that both of them are in one direction. Then it is providing the framework and principles for designing the educational open spaces, according to the different needs of children which can be a beneficial guide for designers. Finally, it can be said that these principles can prove the satisfaction and greater efficiency of educational concepts for children.
Technology-based learning environments
J. Mahdinejad; M. Damavandi; R. Sirous Sabri; J Abbaspour Asadollah
Abstract
In this article the influence of the equipped playgrounds has been compared with natural playgrounds. Playing and moving are the main activity in a young child’s life. Allowing children to experience the natural and man-made elements in their living environment generates cognitive and social skills ...
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In this article the influence of the equipped playgrounds has been compared with natural playgrounds. Playing and moving are the main activity in a young child’s life. Allowing children to experience the natural and man-made elements in their living environment generates cognitive and social skills development and increases their educational qualities. Today, In Iran most spaces for children’s plays are inside the houses and many playgrounds are tarmac places with manufactured equipment likes swings and slides. This survey wants to specify the differences between natural playgrounds and equipped playgrounds and wants to answer the following questions: 1- What changes have happened in the children’s relationship with nature?, 2- What are the specifications of a natural playground? 3- What are the differences between an equipped playground and natural playground? This survey was carried out descriptively and the data have been collected from main resources and different samples. The result of this survey shows that the natural playground will develop children’s educational qualities.
