Education Atlas
Interesting Facts About the Open Classroom
The open classroom movement of the late 1960s and 1970s replaced walled, single-grade rooms with large open-plan spaces, mixed-age groupings and child-chosen learning centers. Its own record includes results and a reversal that rarely make it into a one-line summary.
A Peak, a Backlash, and a Rewalling
Enthusiasm for the open classroom peaked in the mid-1970s, only a few years after it drew partly on British informal-education practice, before a widely reported backlash over noise, distraction and inconsistent outcomes led many schools to physically wall the open spaces back in. Some of its practices, mixed-age grouping and child-chosen activity among them, persisted inside conventional walled classrooms afterward even as the architecture itself was reversed.
One specific finding survived that reversal: third graders with low levels of anxiety were found to be more creative in open schools than in traditional ones, a result narrow enough, tied to one grade and one temperament, to explain why open classrooms could show real benefits for some students while still losing the broader argument on noise and consistency.
Where To Read More
- Open ClassroomNamed Pedagogical Models and MovementsOpen Classroom, the subject entity of this essay