A need for evidence-based and multidisciplinary research to study the effects of the interaction of school environmental conditions on student achievement

Authors

Josephine Lau, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Lily M. Wang, University of NebraskaFollow
Clarence E. Waters, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
James A. Bovaird, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2016

Citation

Published in Indoor and Built Environment 25:6 (2016), pp 869–871. doi 10.1177/1420326X16660456

Comments

Copyright © 2016 Josephine Lau, Lily M. Wang, Clarence Waters, and James Bovaird. Published by SAGE Publications.

Abstract

With funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Healthy Schools initiative, a research team from the University of Nebraska– Lincoln (UNL) is currently working on establishing how environmental conditions in K-12 school buildings impact student scholastic achievement. The objectives of the research project are: (1) to study comprehensively the impacts of a wide set of indoor environmental factors (including indoor air quality, thermal, lighting and acoustic conditions) on student achievement; (2) to investigate how these environmental conditions interact with each other to impact student achievement; (3) to rank order the environmental variables in terms of their relative impact on student achievement and (4) to determine how these effects vary with different demographic (e.g. socio-economic) groups.