Actions of primary school teachers to improve the indoor environmental quality of classrooms in the Netherlands

Actions of primary school teachers to improve the indoor environmental quality of classrooms in the Netherlands

Zhang, D. (TU Delft Indoor Environment)
Bluyssen, P.M. (TU Delft Indoor Environment)

2019

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in classrooms can have an effect on school children’s comfort, health, and performance. In most classrooms, the teacher is the only one who can take actions to change the IEQ. The objective of this study was to identify what teachers usually do to improve IEQ in classrooms and how these actions relate to children’s comfort perceptions. A survey was carried out among 1145 school children (9–12 years) in 21 primary schools (54 classrooms) in the Netherlands. Every child filled out a questionnaire about their comfort perception and every teacher filled out a questionnaire about their IEQ-improving actions and school children’s requests to change the IEQ. The relations among children’s comfort perceptions, their requests, and teachers’ actions were analysed through t-tests and chi-squared tests. The most common action conducted by teachers was opening windows because of the ‘too warm’ complaints. Correspondingly, the most frequent request of the children was opening/closing windows because of thermal discomfort. However, the teachers’ actions did not have a significant impact on children’s comfort perceptions, which means that teachers could not fulfil every child’s needs in a classroom, even though teachers’ actions did relate to the child’s requests.

Children’s perceptions
children’s requests
indoor environmental quality
primary school classrooms
teachers’ actions

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fb1fb965-798a-4dd5-8e54-9bc6dc6e0488

https://doi.org/10.1080/17508975.2019.1617100

1750-8975

Intelligent Buildings International, 13 (2021) (2), 103-115

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2019 D. Zhang, P.M. Bluyssen