Standing desks make students more attentive

Teachers, take note! Want your students to be more attentive in class? Give them standing desks!
Students with standing desks are more attentive than their seated counterparts, a new study has found.
Preliminary results of the study show 12 per cent greater on-task engagement in classrooms with standing desks, which equates to an extra seven minutes per hour of engaged instruction time.
The findings were based on a study of almost 300 children in second through fourth grade who were observed over the course of a school year.
Engagement was measured by on-task behaviours such as answering a question, raising a hand or participating in active discussion and off-task behaviours like talking out of turn.

Standing desks - also known as stand-biased desks - are raised desks that have stools nearby, enabling students to sit or stand during class at their discretion.

Mark Benden, associate professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Centre School of Public Health, became interested in the desks as a means to reduce childhood obesity and relieve stress on spinal structures that may occur with traditional desks.
Benden's previous studies have shown the desks can help reduce obesity - with students at standing desks burning 15 per cent more calories than students at traditional desks (25 per cent for obese children) - and there was anecdotal evidence that the desks also increased engagement.

The latest study was the first designed specifically to look at the impact of classroom engagement.
Benden said he was not surprised at the results of the study, given that previous research has shown that physical activity, even at low levels, may have beneficial effects on cognitive ability.
"Standing workstations reduce disruptive behaviour problems and increase students' attention or academic behavioural engagement by providing students with a different method for completing academic tasks (like standing) that breaks up the monotony of seated work," Benden said.
"Considerable research indicates that academic behavioural engagement is the most important contributor to student achievement. Simply put, we think better on our feet than in our seat," Benden added.

The study was published in the International Journal of Health Promotion and Education.