Comparison of Two Common Classroom Seating Arrangements

rehabilitation counselor in the public schools of Kansas City, Kansas. Educational literature has indicated some concern for the effects of vaious seating arrangements on student performance. Such literature has claimed, for example, that the learning environ-ment of brain-injured youngsters should be free of excessive stimulation (Strauss and Lehtinen 1947). These authors have suggested that classrooms should have uniformly painted walls, no windows or pictures, and individual, isolated desks facing the wall. I n one study the investigators found that a first-grade boy’s (P14’s) study level increased when the boy who sat next to him in a U-shaped seating arrangement was removed and replaced with a female classmate. Later, when P14’S seat was changed so that he sat between two boys, his study level decreased, but it again increased when a girl was placed on either side of him (Burdett et al. 1970). The results of another study demonstrated