A Model of Architectural Factors Influence on Students' Perception of School Climate for Providing School Connectedness

Background and Objectives: The aim of this research was to introduce architectural factors, influencing students' perception of school climate, having a great effect on students' achievement academically, mentally and physically, one of the problems of high school students is their unwillingness for learning and passes their times at educational setting. School connectedness has an effect on students' mental health and decrease of absenteeism and anxiety, also can improve students' collaboration for class activities. Methods: The method of research was both qualitative and quantitative via SPSS and AMOS soft wares. The SEM technique used to determine the possible correlation between physical environment and school climate, the minimum sample of 104 determined by G.power software. In this study, 180 accessible samples of volunteer girl students from three high- schools in Gorgan city were used.  Scales which used named "The six factor school building checklist" "with factors namely, context, massing, social space, interface, way finding and comfort and what's happening in this school? From the students' perspective" for assessing school climate. Test of normality, multiple regression and Pearson correlation used to determine normality and the effects of factors and their variables. Findings: According to R=0.82, there was a strong correlation between physical environment and school climate from the Students' perception and via considering R Square (R2=0.68), 68percent of school climate determined by physical environment as independent variable. From the structure equation modeling, reported that physical environment had a direct total effect of 0.93 on school climate, which showing that the six factor checklist scale is appropriate to determine school climate, and the school connectedness with the regression weight of 0.86 reported as the most influential factor to determine school climate. Regarding to attained results, five factors respectively, social space (Beta weight=0.36), interface (Beta weight=0.22), massing (Beta weight=0.18), way finding (Beta weight=0.15) and comfort (Beta weight=0.10) significantly affected students' perception of school climate but the context factor had a slight effect on students' perception of school climate and it was not statically meaningful. Conclusion: From the results, concluded that the first factor for improving school climate is school connectedness enhancement and the first factor for improving physical environment is considering social spaces in educational setting. Providing small group spaces related to classroom setting, students' access to teachers' office for better interaction out of class times and teachers' support, providing spatial experience for students from the main entrance to the classroom, variation in mass of building and clarity of function in designing building mass are some of the variables that can enhance students' perception of school climate and school connectedness. Building scale in relation to site scale had a slight effect on school climate from the students' perception and can be ignored. Comfort factor and its variables such as individual control of heat and controlling classroom noise level were not at the first priority but should be applied before planning and designing. School building mass design and its placing with suitable distance from the main streets is one of the noise level control method for educational setting