The effectiveness of natural daylight on students’ stress reduction in educational spaces

One of the effective educational factors in the new education is the architecture of the educational spaces. In the new education, the physical space of the school is not only a strict and soulless environment in the learning process, but also plays a role as a living and dynamic factor in the quality of students' educational activities. In learning environments, paying attention to design features is not only in order to improve the quality of the environment but also as a tool to increase the impact of the environment on behavioral characteristics. In some recent research, the physical environment is referred to as the "hidden subject in the curriculum." In this interpretation, the meaning of "hidden subject" is anything that, in addition to the common curriculum, by emotionally organizing the educational space, affects the adolescent emotionally and psychologically. This is "hidden" because it does not necessarily have objective and tangible effects or is often overlooked by everyone. Life stresses play a crucial role in mental and physical health and are especially associated with various psychological and social harms. Identifying student stress is the basic basis for designing and developing various preventive programs. In the meantime, school is a special place as a place where teenagers spend a lot of time and should play a role in reducing students' stress with proper design. Stress is a special relationship between a person and the environment in which the person evaluates the environment beyond his or her resources or threatens his or her health. Various factors play a role in stress. One of these factors is environmental factors. The current study has been done with the aim of investigating the effect of natural daylight on students’ stress reduction in the classroom.

This research is a correlational study and in terms of purpose is an applied research. The research method is survey and the data collection instrument includes the standard questionnaire for measuring stress, anxiety, and depression (DASS-21). The reliability of the questionnaire was approved with the Cronbach’s alpha of 0.897. The questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS software version 22.

Hypothesis testing was done by t-statistic, Pearson correlation coefficient, and regression. The Levin test was also used to verify the research hypotheses. The results of this study indicate that there is a relationship between daylight and stress, anxiety, and depression with correlation coefficients of 0.634, 0.742, and 0.698 have been found respectively (p < 0.01)

The results of this study indicate that in environments with unfavorable light, the rate of depression, anxiety and stress is higher than in environments with favorable light. In general, it can be said that due to the effect of daylight in reducing stress, anxiety and depression of students and their better performance, the importance of paying attention to the effects that school design has on building users becomes more clear. Architects have a major role in designing educational spaces and with proper design and tailored to the physical and mental needs of students can improve the level of education in society. In order to properly use daylight in educational spaces, the following should be considered: height of windows (with increasing window height, depth and amount of daylight increases), type of canopy (indoor, outdoor canopy or direct beam control) and the properties of glass are effective factors in the amount of daylight that must be designed correctly. Also, in addition to the right amount of light and natural light, direct sunlight should be controlled so as not to dazzle the eyes and disturb the thermal balance of the spaces.