Measuring What Matters: Are Government Schools Supporting Learning? Investigating Physical and Psychosocial Perspectives

Author(s) : Syed Nasir Hussain ; Asia Zulfqar & Mubashra Khalid

Abstract:

School environment – a significant contributor towards students’ learning, consists not only on physical infrastructure but psychological and social factors also. This study was designed to investigate the physical and psychosocial factors of learning environment of government schools. Thirty-six schools from six districts of Punjab province were selected through multi-stage sampling technique. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect the data. The research instrument was validated and improved in the light of experts’ opinion. The Cronbach’s Alpha value of the instrument was 0.82. More than 800 students of grade IX and X were involved in the study. Using this quantitative data, the study found a relatively positive student-teacher interaction, but the students don’t feel themselves psychologically and physically safe at school. Students are assigned heavy homework and don’t get proper feedback. It was further found that though schools have sufficient learning resources, yet these resources are not properly utilized in enhancing students’ learning. So, it can be concluded that physical, psychological and social aspects of school learning environment are not conducive for learning. The government should improve physical infrastructure of the schools, while students’ social and psychological well-being should be focused in pre-service and in-service teachers’ trainings.

Keywords: Government schools, Learning environment, Physical environment, Psychosocial environment, student learning