Description
The question that the researcher proposed was if teachers’ attitudes are impacted by the condition of their classrooms, and then are students’ attitudes similarly impacted? The purpose of this study was to determine if all occupants perceived their physical classroom environment in a similar fashion. In order to answer this question a re-examination of the relationship between school facility conditions and the end users’ attitudes about student learning environments was necessary. Two research questions were developed with the intent to compare and include student attitudes towards the impact of the condition of the school facility on their learning. Other attitudinal studies have exclusively targeted teacher attitudes. The results from this study make several noteworthy contributions to the growing body of research on educational facility impact and student voice. The findings reiterate that positive and negative findings are compounded when student responses are considered. In addition, by providing a student-centric digitized, revised and widely used instrument called the Adapted-My Classroom Assessment Protocol (A-MCAP) will hopefully encourage researchers to account for student voice in future facility perceptions studies. In order to demarginalize students their voice must be included in the school environment discussion, regardless to whether education decision makers want to hear it or not. The environment in which students spend a majority of their young adult life impacts their learning. It is this researchers’ unintended findings and hope that this inclusion continues beyond this study to build future ready schools.
