Approaches of environmental psychology to assessing the classroom environment can be classified into two major schools; the ecological and the cognitive. Both of them have their origin in Lewin's formula; B=f (P, E). In early days of the cognitive school, Murray's Need-Press model made a striking contribution to the concept of person-environment fit by furthering the fundamental framework of the corresponding relationship between persons and the environment. Subsequently, Stern and Hunt developed a theory of person-environment fit. Numerous studies have shown that the congruence of students' preferred-actual environment (person-environment fit) at the class level relates to student positive achievement. In early ecological school studies, Barker and Wright found the place specificity of behavior, namely behavior settings. It is defined that effective learning would arise from synomorphy, that is the similarity in shape between standing patterns of behavior and the physical milieu. Finally, for reactivating the learning environment research in environmental psychology, we discuss future studies, such as the instruments for a technology-rich learning environment, learner's individual differences, and the paradigm shift of environment-behavior research from interaction to transaction.
View full abstract