Designing with Color in the Early Childhood Education Classroom: A Theoretical Perspective
- 1 Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
Abstract
Early childhood education and care centers provide young children with opportunities to explore, create, reflect, experiment, and learn in the classroom environment. Theorists of human development have proposed theories, paradigms, models and ideologies regarding children’s relationships with the social and physical environment. The physical layout of the early childhood education classroom is related to the center’s theoretical or ideological perspective. For every theoretical model and teaching perspective, the designed environment will play a role in the quality of children’s experiences in the classroom. The optimally-designed classroom space offers children a setting for exploration, reflection, and learning through the use and application of design principles and elements. The objective of this paper is to connect the concepts from the interior design field with the concepts from early childhood education perspectives on best practices for the design of early childhood education classrooms. Current research on color preference is presented, followed by an analysis of color in early childhood education classrooms. A color questionnaire is provided to assist teachers with the use of color as a design tool in their classrooms.
- Barrett, P., Davies, F., Zhang, Y., & Barrett, L. (2015). The Impact of Classroom Design on Pupils’ Learning: Final Results of a Holistic, Multi-Level Analysis. Building and Environment, 89, 118-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2015.02.013
- Beke, L., Kutas, G., Kwak, Y., Young Sung, G., Park, D. S., & Bodrogi, P. (2008). Color Preferences of Aged Observers Compared to Young Observers. Color Research & Application, 33, 381-394. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.20434
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (2005). Making Human Beings Human: Bioecological Perspectives on Human Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch & Company.
- Erikson, E. (1963). Childhood and Society. New York: Norton & Co.
- Franklin, A., Bevis, L., Ling, Y., & Hurlbert, A. (2010). Biological Components of Color Preference in Infancy. Developmental Science, 13, 346-354. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00884.x
- Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
- Gnambs, T., Appel, M., & Kaspar, K. (2015). The Effect of the Color Red on Encoding and Retrieval of Declarative Knowledge. Learning and Individual Differences, 42, 90-96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.07.017
- Hidayetoglu, M. L., Yildirim, K., & Akalin, A. (2012). The Effects of Color and Light on Indoor Way Finding and the Evaluation of the Perceived Environment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32, 50-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2011.09.001
- Jalil, N. A., Yunus, R. M., & Said, N. S. (2012). Environmental Colour Impact upon Human Behavior: A Review. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 35, 54-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.02.062
- Joh, A. S., & Spivey, L. A. (2012). Colorful Success: Preschoolers’ Use of Perceptual Color Cues to Solve a Spatial Reasoning Problem. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 113, 523-534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.06.012
- Montessori, M. (1967). The Discovery of the Child. New York: Ballantine Books.
- Palmer, S. E., & Schloss, K. B. (2010). An Ecological Valence Theory of Human Color Preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, 107, 8877-8882. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0906172107