Standing Classrooms: Research and Lessons Learned from Around the World

Abstract

Children spend between 50 and 70 % of their time sitting while at school. Independent of physical activity levels, prolonged sitting is associated with poor health outcomes in adulthood. While there is mixed evidence of health associations among children and adolescents, public health guidelines in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada now recommend young people should break up long periods of sitting as frequently as possible. A potentially effective approach for reducing and breaking up sitting throughout the day is changing the classroom environment. This paper presents an overview of a relatively new area of research designed to reduce youth sitting time while at school by changing the classroom environment (n = 13 studies). Environmental changes included placement of height-adjustable or stand-biased standing desks/workstations with stools, chairs, exercise balls, bean bags or mats in the classroom. These 13 published studies suggest that irrespective of the approach, youth sitting time was reduced by between ~44 and 60 min/day and standing time was increased by between 18 and 55 min/day during classroom time at school. Other benefits include increased energy expenditure and the potential for improved management of students' behaviour in the classroom. However, few large trials have been conducted, and there remains little evidence regarding the impact on children's learning and academic achievement. Nevertheless, with an increasing demand placed on schools and teachers regarding students' learning outcomes, strategies that integrate moving throughout the school day and that potentially enhance the learning experience and future health outcomes for young people warrant further exploration.

Impact of an 8-Month Trial Using Height-Adjustable Desks on Children’s Classroom Sitting Patterns and Markers of Cardio-Metabolic and Musculoskeletal Health

“…There were no significant intervention effects on classroom sitting time among the 10–12 year olds in that study [62]. This suggests that modifications to the environment in addition to pedagogical strategies may require to achieve greater magnitude of change [35] and that curriculum-based strategies alone are unlikely to be sufficient. Future research should examine which strategies or combination of strategies are most effective at reducing and breaking-up sitting.…”

“…This approach may also have a favourable impact on some health indicators such as energy expenditure [31,32], body mass index (BMI) [33] and musculoskeletal health [25,34]. However, a general consensus of the benefits of height-adjustable desks on health has not been reached [35]. Most studies have: typically involved short-term follow-ups (e.g., 18 weeks on average, with the exception of one study undertaken over 1.5 years [34]); had limited objective measurement of the entire physical activity spectrum (important for identifying what impact reducing sitting has on other intensities of physical activity); or just assessed adiposity-related outcomes (e.g., energy expenditure and BMI) or indices of musculoskeletal discomfort [36,37].…”

Standing, Active vs Sitting, Torpid: a Management Decision

“…By saying, -Standing-Active‖ or -Stand-biased‖ or -Standing-Biased‖ we want to differentiate the default activity from -Standing Rigid‖, the latter can be just as bad for health outcomes as sitting rigid or sitting soporifically, think of guards outside a high security installation who stand but don't move, that is standing rigid (Benzo, Gremaud, Jerome, & Carr, 2016;Dornhecker, Blake, Benden, Zhao, & Wendel, 2015;Hinckson et al, 2016). The key to Standing-Active is A scrum master is the facilitator for an agile development team.…”

A good beginning: study protocol for a group-randomized trial to investigate the effects of sit-to-stand desks on academic performance and sedentary time in primary education

“…The primary aim of the program of "A Good Beginning" is to assess possible harm inflicted on academic performance as an adverse event of long-term implementation of sit-to-stand desks in the primary school classroom. Based on previous findings in shorter term studies [24][25][26][27]31], we expect that the sit-to-stand desks are proper alternatives to regular, seated desks without negative effects on academic performance, and possibly with positive effects. Secondly, in terms of effectiveness, the program aims to assess the long-term effect of sitto-stand desks on sedentary time.…”

“…On the one hand, reduced sitting time [16][17][18][19][20][21] and increased energy expenditure [22][23][24] are relevant physical benefits of using desks that promote standing found in previous studies. On the other hand, concerns about the use of such desks have been expressed by teachers and the long term impact on academic performance is unclear [25]. In short term studies, academic performance didn't seem to suffer [26].…”