Ergonomic design of classroom furniture for elementary schools

Abstract

Classroom activities require a high concentration and visual, auditory, motor and cognitive mechanisms are constantly stimulated, which makes educational tasks complex. Students’ anthropometric dimensions vary not only between school years in elementary school, but also when comparing individuals of the same age. Thus it is unlikely that furniture with fixed dimensions for all school years in elementary schools will be compatible with the vast majority of students. This work proposes the adoption of adjustable furniture and the use of a (mis)match criteria to address this issue. It is expected that this adjustability and the propose criteria can cope with the differences found in anthropometric dimensions of the students, giving them a better accommodation and ease in their use (usability). The current proposal will, hopefully, increase the comfort and decrease the cases of body aches complaints. For the determination of the adjustability of the school furniture, anthropometric measures of the population of users are necessary and also to find the relationship among them, so that the levels of adjustability can match the anthropometric measures with the dimensions of school furniture