Practical State of School Furniture and the Improvement : Investigation of the actual conditions of the desks and chairs in general classroom

摘要

A large number of studies have been made on the desk and chair viewed in ergonomic approach, but little is known about the matching between the shape of pupil's body and the desk and chair in classroom. This paper is intended as an investigation of the actual conditions of the desks and chairs in general classroom. And this questionnaire survey to three elementary schools' pupils and three junior high schools' students in Okinawa was conducted to investigate both the actual conditions of the desks and chairs and the attitude to them. We were also concerned with the rearrangement of the desks and chairs in the same school from the point of view of pupils' height.The results obtained are summarized as:1) The desks and chairs in use were widespread school furniture which were movable slide type of height in elementary schools and fixed type of height in junior high schools.2) The desks and chairs in corect size were not distributed among pupils, large size furniture were allotted to many pupils.3) In the elementary schools, the size 3 and 4 desks and chairs in Japanese Industrial Standard were distributed in the main, the size 5,6 and 7 desks and chairs in JIS were in short supply.4) In the junior high schools, the size 3,4 and 5 desks and chairs in JIS were insufficient.5) The conformity rate of desks and chairs with the pupils' height were 5.0% in the elementary schools and 9.2-37.3% in the junior high schools.6) If the rearrangement of the desks and chairs in the same school from the point of view of pupils' height put into force, the conformity rate change to 36.1-62.7% in the elementary schools and 27.2-46.8% in the junior high schools.7) The consciousness of the pupils to the desks and chairs were much more favorable than expected. And many of them wanted to have larger ones.