Agent-based Simulation of the Classroom Environment to Gauge the Effect of Inattentive or Disruptive Students

The classroom environment is a major contributor to the learning process in schools. Young students are affected by different details in their academic progress, be it their own characteristics, their teacher’s or their peers’. The combination of these factors is known to have an impact on the attainment of young students. However, what is less known are ways to accurately measure the impact of the individual variables. Moreover, in education, predicting an end-result is not enough, but understanding the process is vital. Thus, in this paper, we simulate the interactions between these factors to offer education stakeholders – administrators and teachers, in a first instance – the possibility of understanding how their activities and the way they manage the classroom can impact on students’ academic achievement and result in different learning outcomes. The simulation is based on data from Performance Indicator in Primary Schools (PIPS) monitoring system, of 65,385 records that include 3,315 classes from 2,040 schools, with an average of 26 students per class collected in 2007. The results might serve teachers in solving issues that occur in classrooms and improve their strategies based on the predicted outcome