The effects of standing desks within the school classroom: A systematic review

Background The school classroom environment often dictates that pupils sit for prolonged periods which may be detrimental for children's health. Replacing traditional school desks with standing desks may reduce sitting time and provide other benefits. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of standing desks within the school classroom. Method Studies published in English up to and including June 2015 were located from online databases and manual searches. Studies implementing standing desks within the school classroom, including children and/or adolescents (aged 5–18 years) which assessed the impact of the intervention using a comparison group or pre–post design were included. Results Eleven studies were eligible for inclusion; all were set in primary/elementary schools, and most were conducted in the USA (n = 6). Most were non-randomised controlled trials (n = 7), with durations ranging from a single time point to five months. Energy expenditure (measured over 2 h during school day mornings) was the only outcome that consistently demonstrated positive results (three out of three studies). Evidence for the impact of standing desks on sitting, standing, and step counts was mixed. Evidence suggested that implementing standing desks in the classroom environment appears to be feasible, and not detrimental to learning. Conclusions Interventions utilising standing desks in classrooms demonstrate positive effects in some key outcomes but the evidence lacks sufficient quality and depth to make strong conclusions. Future studies using randomised control trial designs with larger samples, longer durations, with sitting, standing time and academic achievement as primary outcomes, are warranted.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Preventive medicine reports

• Publication date

  2016-04-09

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Education

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.pmedr.2016.03.016PMID 27419034PMCID 4929187
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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