Affiliations: Centre for Ergonomics, Occupational Safety and Health,
Department of Management, Massey University, Palmerston North, New
Zealand | Clinical Professor and Program Director, Distance
Education Post-professional Programs in Occupational Therapy, Boston
University, Boston, MA, USA
Abstract: Ergonomics in Schools has focused on micro-ergonomics issues such as
mismatch between student body sizes and their desks and chairs, the weight of
schoolbags and the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders amongst school
students. Very little of this has been turned into practice. Although advances
in this context are being made by the International Ergonomics (IEA) Technical
Committee (TC) on Ergonomics for Children in Educational Environments (ECEE),
the UK Ergonomics Society Special Interest Group on Ergonomics for Schools and
the New Zealand Ergonomics Society Ergonomics/Human factors in Education
(EHFIE) Special Interest Group, there has been less focus on macro-ergonomics
issues such as learning environments, ergonomics pedagogy and curriculum
content/structure. This commentary reviews micro-ergonomics aspects of
`Ergonomics in schools' and argues in favour of a new direction:
macro-ergonomics for schools, or educational ergonomics in which
ergonomists seek to integrate ergonomics into national educational curricula in
concert with Ministries of Education and also via inclusion of ergonomics
modules in teacher training.
Keywords: Education, human factors, learning, curricula
