What does “good sitting” look like in the classroom? When we tell our pupils they need to practise this, we often expect to see them sitting in the right spot, with folded arms and crossed legs, not slumping.
But does “good sitting” look the same for everyone? I wanted to find out whether more flexible seating could be beneficial, as schools strive to meet the needs of all pupils.
I was very fortunate to be awarded a grant from The Churchill Fellowship to evaluate the use of flexible seating arrangements on a whole-school basis at Mayflower Primary School in Tower Hamlets, London.
To help us develop our evaluation, we enlisted the help of an advisory group led by Dr Laura Crane, associate professor at the Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE) at University College London. Among the advisory group members (which included academics and education professionals) was an autistic researcher, Sarah O’Brien, who is also a PhD candidate at Kings’ College London.
Previous studies on the use of flexible seating in classrooms have tended to be quite small-scale and focused on neurodivergent pupils (such as autistic children), or the use of one specific kind of chair (such as a wobble cushion). What made our evaluation unique was that it involved all pupils aged 4-11 years in the school and we trialled a total of 11 different kinds of chairs, including standing desks and rocking chairs, across 14 different classrooms.
We agreed with all staff that the chairs should be visible and accessible to all children, without any particular chair being tied to a certain child.
Each classroom had up to three different types of chairs at any one time, and we made sure that “non-traditional” chairs made up 25 per cent of the available seating. This meant that all pupils who wanted to try the alternative seating had a chance to do so.
Once it became clear which types of seats the children preferred, we increased the amount of non-traditional seating to 50 per cent.
We also appointed a representative group of children (our “chair committee”) to help us steer the evaluation by gathering observations across the school and relaying their peers’ opinions.
It’s worth pointing out that our school is generally quite flexible in terms of seating plans, and children regularly move around the classroom for different activities throughout the day. Many of the new seats could be easily moved, and this allowed children to complete work in different parts of the class if they wanted to - for example, a standing desk could easily be moved to the carpet or book corner.
Benefits of flexible seating
After six months of having flexible seating in the classrooms, and with support from two research assistants from CRAE, Aaron Giuliano and Thayla-May Bradley, we surveyed a total of 315 children (57 of whom were neurodivergent) and 33 staff, including senior leaders, teachers and teaching assistants. Our work with pupils included a mixture of surveys and activities to find out the reasons that they used or didn’t use the chairs, and we gave staff a survey to give them an opportunity to reflect on the successes and challenges of having flexible seating arrangements in their classes.
We found that both staff and children were overwhelmingly positive about the use of flexible seating. Although “fun” did feature (very minimally), pupils’ main driving factors for choosing a seat were how that seat might affect their concentration levels, movement and comfort. Of particular importance was their very clear need for movement in lessons.
Most staff reported that the use of flexible seating did not prove difficult to adjust their teaching to, nor did it make managing behaviour in the classroom more challenging.
In fact, staff reported that the use of flexible seating made teaching and supporting pupils easier, and they felt it led to improved pupil engagement, behaviour, comfort, mood, motivation and peer-to-peer collaboration.
The only minor issues we faced were logistical ones around the chairs themselves. For example, standing desks had to be placed where they wouldn’t block other children from seeing the teacher. And one of the types of chairs we tried (a ball chair) didn’t quite work with the size of our classrooms.
Overall, then, our study has shown that the benefits of flexible seating were overwhelmingly positive for all children. It’s a feasible way for schools to meet the needs of more children, does not require huge (and costly) building adaptations, and is very much aligned with the principles of universal design. As a result, the use of flexible seating in our school is now a permanent fixture.
The project was hugely beneficial for us as a school, but also for the academics involved. As Crane notes: “Despite lots of educational research being funded and published, there is a persistent gap between academic research and educational practice. One solution to this issue is for greater collaboration between academic researchers and education practitioners. Quite frankly, our research wouldn’t have been as relevant, useful or impactful had it not been for our collaboration with Mayflower.”
I hope that our study will encourage more school leaders to try flexible seating arrangements in their classrooms and to gather high-quality evidence about the practices they are implementing in their settings.
Heba Al-Jayoosi is the assistant headteacher and inclusion and research leader at Mayflower Primary School in London. She would like to thank Dr Laura Crane for her contributions to this article.
Heba will be one of the speakers at the upcoming Schools and Academies Show in London. Tes are media partner for the event. Find out more and register for free by visiting the Schools and Academies Show website
