Designing the Ideal Classroom Space

At some point during the lesson, it was clear that students weren’t paying attention. Some looked past the teacher at the colorful posters lining the wall; others squirmed in their seats, fiddled with their pencils, or stared off into the distance. Only a few had eyes on the teacher.

Over the last decade, researcher Karrie Godwin has painstakingly gathered, catalogued, and analyzed real-classroom moments just like these. As a professor of developmental psychology at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, her objective was to determine how the design of classrooms and structure of lessons shape student attention, with an eye towards understanding precisely when—and why—student attention begins to drift.

What Godwin and her colleagues have found challenges a common assumption: Distraction isn’t always a matter of willpower or disengagement. Often, it’s a simple matter of cognitive limits, and educators can make relatively simple adjustments to achieve better outcomes.

“Across my research, the key principle is that classroom instruction and environments should be aligned with children’s cognitive development—whether that’s classroom design or how long lessons are,” says Godwin. “When we do that, we make it easier for students to focus on learning.”

I recently sat down with Godwin to ask her about the “Goldilocks rule” of classroom decoration, to pose a few questions about different types of brain breaks, and to check on whether there’s a known time limit to student attention.

Youki Terada: I’ve been following your research for over a decade, and executive function is a common thread. For teachers who may not be familiar with the term, what is it, and why is it so central to learning?

Karrie Godwin: One way to think of executive function is that it includes a set of cognitive processes that help us regulate our thoughts, actions, and behavior. There’s a line of research that focuses on three core executive functions: memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, which is being able to shift or adapt to new information, contexts, or tasks.

Executive functions are critically important for learning because these skills allow students to sustain attention, resist distractions, and hold goals in working memory for planning. Much of my research focuses on attention regulation and inhibiting distractions, because difficulties with executive function can make school particularly challenging. These are the foundational cognitive skills that lay the foundation for learning.

Terada: So how do classroom environments place demands on students’ executive function abilities?

Godwin: There’s a lot going on in classrooms. You have many children in the room working with teachers and paraeducators, while adults come in and out. There are also environmental distractions, like the hum of the HVAC system and the visual design of the classroom.

There’s a lot of variability in how classrooms are decorated. Some have lots of bright colors, with artwork hanging on the ceiling and windows. Others—often influenced by Montessori or Waldorf approaches—tend to be more streamlined and neutral.

One of the central ideas in our research is that the visual environment can create competition for attention. Attention is a limited cognitive resource—we can only focus on one thing at a time, and it also gradually depletes. If students are constantly trying to ignore distractions from the visual environment, then they’re less focused on instruction, which can result in missed learning opportunities.

Terada: These findings come from your 2014 study?

Godwin: Yes. In that study, we looked at children in either a streamlined environment or a decorated one and found that on average learning scores improved by 18 percent in the decorated classroom, but when the displays and decorations were simply removed children’s learning gains jumped to 33 percent.

And then in 2022, we replicated those findings and also found that prolonged exposure to decorated classrooms still distracted them, even as they became familiar with the displays.

When teaching young children, it’s helpful to know that attention regulation is difficult for them because the skill is still developing. Streamlining a classroom isn’t a silver bullet for all educational challenges, but it’s one way we can reduce unnecessary demands on attention and improve learning outcomes.

Terada: When you say “streamline,” what do you mean?

Godwin: We’re not promoting the idea of bare walls. Our initial study simply tested whether highly decorated classrooms create attentional competition—we found that they did, when compared to more streamlined environments where displays were removed or covered.

But that study didn’t tell us what was optimal. Our later work revealed a Goldilocks effect, where moderation is key: You don’t want too little, and you don’t want too much. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle—around 25 percent—where you’re providing visual stimulation without overwhelming children with visual noise. So that’s far from blank walls—try introducing some blank space in your classroom so that the classroom itself is more curated for your students’ learning. If you’re short on space, you can rotate bulletin boards and other displays so they match the curriculum.

Elementary classrooms often display a lot of material. Some of it is educational, while some is purely decorative. What I recommend is purposeful design: Are you hanging a poster or chart that connects with what students are learning? Or is it purely decorative? That distinction can help guide decisions about what to include.

I’d also note that not everything needs to be academic. There’s a growing body of research showing that classroom environments can create a sense of belonging, and that should also guide what you include in your classroom.

Terada: If you were talking to a teacher, what’s the most important thing you’d want them to think about when decorating their classroom?

Godwin: For many teachers, decorating their classroom is a labor of love. You’ll see full-on art installations that look like they come out of Pinterest, and often it’s money coming out of the teacher’s own pockets.

But that approach is not aligned with what’s best for children’s attention regulation. So my advice is to consider paring it down and thinking about purpose. It doesn’t have to apply to the whole classroom—even creating a few visually streamlined spaces can help children regulate attention more effectively.

Terada: What are some common mistakes that teachers make?

Godwin: This isn’t just about teachers—it’s adults in general. We often assume that children want classrooms that are more decorated, but that’s not always the case. So it’s less a mistake and more a challenge—how can we create a shared space that’s warm and welcoming, but also doesn’t add a heavy burden on children’s attention regulation.

Terada: You’ve studied several classroom design elements, from color to visual clutter. Can you walk me through your findings for each?

Godwin: Being mindful of the quantity of colors that you’re introducing into the room is important. We found that high amounts of color variation were related to less on-task behavior. Visual noise also mattered—being organized and reducing clutter. It’s challenging for elementary teachers since they’re covering multiple subjects in a single classroom, and there’s always a shortage of space. So oftentimes you’ll see lots of creative storage solutions in classrooms.

We found that the more color variation and visual noise a classroom had, the more off-task students were. You want to give kids some level of visual stimulation, but avoid overstimulating them.

Terada: We’re going to switch gears a little bit, because you also conducted research on the more general limits of attention for young students. In a 2016 study, for example, you compared short and long lessons. What did you find?

Godwin: In that study, we observed how the length of instructional activities predicted on-task behavior. The longer the lesson—we looked at a 10-minute versus a 30-minute instructional block, for example—the less students were on task.

Attention is limited—students can only attend to a small amount of information at a time, and can’t do it indefinitely. Understanding the dynamics of attention helps us decide how long a lesson should be or why it’s so important to introduce breaks.

In some of our studies with college students, we see attention waning as early as five minutes. This mismatch between instructional duration and cognitive constraints is an underexplored issue, particularly for young children.

Terada: So if the length of a lesson influences cognitive performance, does this mean that students have inherent attentional limits?

Godwin: At some point, attention will break down. From an instructional standpoint, the goal is to introduce breaks before students reach that point. There’s individual variability—how much sleep they got or whether they ate breakfast can influence attention levels, for example—but we should be mindful of how long a lesson is and introduce breaks to split a long lesson into smaller ones.

Terada: What can teachers do during lessons to help students maintain focus?

Godwin: Teachers already use breaks really widely, though often a narrow range—typically physical activity or video breaks, which require minimal planning.

Teachers are often concerned about the lost instructional time. But breaks can replenish attention so students return more engaged, more focused, and more likely to remember the learning that happened just before the break.

I’m currently doing research on the benefits of breaks for memory consolidation, and what we’re finding is that breaks improve the encoding and recall of information. When we give students a break after a lesson, they have higher learning scores compared to students who didn’t take a break. We looked at a variety of breaks, from playing with blocks to brain teasers, coloring, connecting with nature, and mind wandering.

Terada: Of those different types of breaks, was there one that stood out as being more effective?

Godwin: The preliminary results suggest that taking a break is more important than the particular type of break, which wasn’t what we were expecting.

Terada: Right, so all types of brain breaks worked. Do you have any tips for the timing of breaks?

Godwin: I wish we had a smartwatch alert for it. But the main thing to keep in mind is that attention can wane within five to fifteen minutes, and instruction shouldn’t be longer than that. It also helps to use your intuition—if your students need a break earlier than planned, flexibility can be more supportive than sticking to a schedule.

Terada: If you were in a classroom today talking about your research to teachers, what are some key tips you would share for optimizing their classrooms to improve learning and attention?

Godwin: First, remember that a child’s ability to regulate their attention is still developing. Anything we can do within the classroom environment to support it increases their learning. That includes keeping lessons short and introducing multiple breaks throughout the day—on top of recess—to help kids to replenish their attention.

In terms of the classroom environment, engage in a mindful, purposeful design. For example, you can ask yourself, “Why am I putting this particular display up, and what purpose is it serving?” If you want something that’s purely decorative, go for it, but just keep in mind that a moderate amount of visual stimulation is going to be better for your students.

Across my research, the key principle is that classroom instruction and environments should be aligned with children’s cognitive development—whether that’s classroom design or how long lessons are. When we do that, we make it easier for students to focus on learning.