Developing a psychological understanding of students’ perceptions of their school environment and the relationship with academic achievement

Educational research has demonstrated the importance of variables such as Socioeconomic Status (SES), Gender and Attendance in relation to academic achievement. In addition, research has also highlighted the importance of the physical learning environment in relation to academic achievement and in particular objective characteristics such as temperature, air quality and noise. The way in which students subjectively perceive their school environment has received less attention. However, one recent study has demonstrated how students’ subjective perceptions of their physical school environment, along with SES, Gender and Attendance, are all significantly related to academic achievement. The current study applies a new and distinct methodological approach to an existing data set to develop a psychological model of the physical environment to uncover latent factors which may be important in describing the relationship between the environment and academic performance. The study was conducted on data from 387, S5 students in five secondary schools in Scotland. Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to identify the underlying factor structure of the original 60 item questionnaire that was used to measure students’ perceptions of their school environment. Multiple regression analyses were then conducted to investigate the relationship between SES, Gender, Attendance and the new factors identified in the factor analysis, with academic achievement. The factor analysis identified a nine-factor model that reflects distinct dimensions of the physical and social aspects of the school and provides a comprehensive understanding of how students experience their surroundings. The multiple regression analyses confirmed that SES, Gender, and Attendance were significant predictors of academic achievement and that the inclusion of the nine factors explained an additional 11% of the variance in academic achievement. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of how this psychological model of the physical school environment could be used to inform future educational design, policy, and interventions.