Wikipedia/Cassandra W
How do natural views affect student achievement? Shimon Zimbovsky, a very enthusiastic graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, is working on a long-term study of 36 schools to see whether replacing the barren landscapes surrounding the schools with vegetation will have any effect on students’ performance. His work, which he presented last Thursday at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture conference, was inspired by an earlier study by Rodney H. Matsuoka published in Landscape and Urban Planning (payment required).
Matsuoka examined 101 high schools in Michigan to see what role the presence of natural views played in students’ academic achievement and behavior. His analysis controlled for a number of factors, including socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, building age, and school size. According to the paper, “Views with greater quantities of trees and shrubs from cafeteria as well as classroom windows are positively associated with standardized test scores, graduation rates, percentages of students planning to attend a four-year college, and fewer occurrences of criminal behavior.” The opposite was also true. Where the views lacked trees and shrubs, where cafeterias and classrooms looked out over parking lots and large expanses of lawn, Matsuoka found lower levels of academic achievement.
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