Library Space and High School Climate

Elke Altenburger (Illinois State University)

Teenagers’ time spent in school libraries has been connected to their level of motivation and achievement, but not all students feel equally comfortable in their school library. With the goal of creating informal, accessible learning environments, designers strive to promote many different learning and social activities with these spaces.

This work is part of a long-term research agenda committed to deepening the understanding of student peer culture, commonly perceived as intrinsically problematic, and the role of school buildings in school social climate (Voight & Nation, 2016). New or recently renovated libraries of three Midwest high schools served as research sites. Data was collected through extensive field notes based on observations from prolonged engagement in these settings and subsequent semi-structured interviews with stakeholders. In general, despite similar contexts, school climates and peer cultures in libraries existed on a surprisingly wide spectrum.

The architecturally most celebrated library was, sadly, the most underutilized due to strictly guarded access by library staff. The centrally located, yet intimate, second library served as an informal learning environment for high-performing students. The remotely located third library, offering several furniture arrangements, displayed a range of user groups engaging in a variety of learning activities. The primary investigator will offer deep descriptions of all categories of library users, their peer culture and peer values and explain the social affordances (Gibson, 1979) of the spaces as facilitated by the rules of the places (Canter, 1991). After mapping the data for the physical, the social, and the affective library spaces separately for each case the investigator will present the results of a cross-case analysis.

Findings and implications will be relevant to researchers, educators and designers of schools as they help deepen the understanding of different combinations of socio-spatial library aspects on students’ decision to become library users.