Assessing perceptions of the environment in elementary classrooms: the link with achievement

Abstract

This paper examines students' perceptions of their classroom environment and the possible effect of these perceptions on math and reading achievement. Additionally, the paper investigates the significance of gender and grade level on students' perceptions of the classroom environment. Participants were elementary school students in a large urban school district in the western part of the US. Data collected were based on test scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) and scores on the My Classroom Inventory (MCI) to measure perceptions. Correlation analyses and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) procedures were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that the perceptions of the general classroom environment were significantly related to math and reading achievement, although this was not the case for the individual dimensions of the classroom environment. Gender had no statistically significant association with the students' perceptions of the classroom environment, whereas the grade level had a statistically significant relationship with the perceptions.