Learning Environment in education typically refers to the overall climate and culture of classrooms, including communication patterns, the design, feel, and organization of physical space, and the teacher's ability to manage students in the classroom.

As the teacher, you must believe that students can accept responsibility and that your actions are closely related to the manner in which the students respond. It is your responsibility as teacher to establish the proper atmosphere in the classroom. You need to develop a "we attitude," to think in terms of working with your students, together. This attitude will help you establish positive goals concerning teacher-student relationships, student-student relationships, and the learning purposes of the classroom, and it will foster a supportive emotional climate. The classroom environment needs to be supportive of all persons so that students will learn to respect all other individuals and their ideas.

Schools should also been consciously designed to be caring places , featuring cooperation and helping behavior. For example, Solomon et al. (1990) have developed goals for such schools, emphasizing five elements:

• Helping rewards
• Rewarding kindness, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and the like--not just academic achievement
• Discourse about understanding--discussions of literature, class meetings, assemblies, and fairs to promote helping, caring, and understanding of others (e.g. peoples of other cultures)
• Developmental discipline--rule setting and discussion of rules by children to foster self control and the building of friendships by resolving disputes in an equitable manner
• Cooperative learning--the building of prosocial values and social skills while reworking to achieve competency in academic content.

Student motivation is closely connected to the positive learning environment of the classroom. Teachers who strive to increase student motivation will, in turn, improve the learning environment in the classroom. Some of these ways to increase motivation among students are well researched, and some derive from the experience of veteran educators. We present a few of them below:

• Begin lessons by giving students a reason to be motivated
• Tell students exactly what you expect them to accomplish
• Have students set short-term goals
• Capitalize on the arousal value of suspense, discover, curiosity, exploration, control, and fantasy
• Occasionally do the unexpected
• Be cautious about competition
• Make students use what they have previously learned.
• Use simulations and games
• Minimize the attractiveness of competing motivational systems.
• Minimize any unpleasant consequences of student involvement.

Another major component of the learning environment is effective classroom management . Classroom management systems include routine ways of managing instructional and behavioral interactions in the classroom.



Based on Orlich et al, Teaching Strategies, 5/e, 1998 and Gage/Berliner, Educational Psychology, 6/e, 1998