Agent-based Classroom Environment Simulation: the Effect of Disruptive Schoolchildren’s Behaviour versus Teacher Control over Neighbours

Abstract

Schoolchildren's academic progress is known to be affected by the classroom environment. It is important for teachers and administrators to under-stand their pupils' status and how various factors in the classroom may affect them, as it can help them adjust pedagogical interventions and management styles. In this study, we expand a novel agent-based model of classroom interac-tions of our design, towards a more efficient model, enriched with further param-eters of peers and teacher’s characteristics, which we believe renders a more re-alistic setting. Specifically, we explore the effect of disruptive neighbours and teacher control. The dataset used for the design of our model consists of 65,385 records, which represent 3,315 classes in 2007, from 2,040 schools in the UK.