Place Attachment in Quebec's Primary Schools Classrooms: The Contribution of Reading and Documentation Spaces

Claudie Rousseau (Université Laval)

Place attachment is a well-documented subject in the field of environmental psychology. In school context, research says it can influence educational experience and in the same way, school success. Furthermore, school planning research indicates that the physical environment of the classroom has the potential to affect students' behaviors, cognitive development, and academic success. It is also proven that supplementing the classroom with a reading corner can stimulate better results in reading. Moreover, literacy is the most important skill to develop at school, as it is one of the best predictors of academic achievement. This paper explores users' attachment to classrooms through the place and object scales in Quebec's primary schools' context and tries to understand the contribution of reading and the documentation spaces on this matter. To get there, we examined this contribution through various data collection activities: precise inventory and documentation of the objects in this place, participating observations as well as student and teacher interviews. We proceeded by theoretical sampling of diversification through multiple homogeneous cases. This qualitative analysis was conducted in 19 elementary schools and classes selected in the province Quebec, Canada. It provided information on the objects composing classrooms through their uses and experiences, social and pedagogical and also the appreciation and perception of these spaces by users. The results point out to a wide variety of display and appropriation markers. In particular, the reading corner is an omnipresent space in Quebec’s classrooms and presents itself as a distinguishing area of the classroom, appreciated and appropriated by both students and teachers. It is therefore from this relationship between the learning and reading experiences and place attachment that we are able to draw lines to guide the conception of these spaces and the objects that determine user’s needs and experiences, positive or not.