The Educational Leader’s Role in Guiding Teachers to Declutter Their Classrooms

Abstract

Abstract: Classrooms are often cluttered, creating overstimulated students and overwhelmed teachers, which does not lead to optimal learning environments. A teacher’s role is to optimize the learning environment; however, not all teachers are aware of the connection between the physical learning environment and learning outcomes. Of particular concern is the link between cluttered spaces and poor learning outcomes due to distraction (Granito and Santana, 2016). Unfortunately, not all instructional leaders recognize this connection either or those who do may not always know how to provide support. The educational leader's responsibility as an instructional leader is to help teaching staff enhance their ability to establish ideal learning settings. Thus, educational leaders need to prioritize support for teachers in creating school spaces that are intentionally decluttered for optimum learning and teaching. In this paper, I provide best practices using research and personal observation to describe how to support educational leaders in this process. This paper also includes a section on how to support teachers during decluttering as suggested by practitioners writing on the internet.