• Journal of the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2015

This study aimed to identify secondary school students' perceptions of school spaces by researching their place preferences and the reasons for them. For the purpose, we analyzed students' written statements regarding places they like and dislike at school, which were collected from 836 middle and 1,100 high school students enrolled at 4 middle and 4 high schools, respectively. Data were transcribed, encoded, and analyzed so as to be clustered to themes revealing the students' senses of places at school. The results are as follows: (1) for middle school students, the most preferred places had to do with physical activities, including playground, auditorium, gymnasium etc., whereas high school students preferred indoor places such as classrooms; (2) the reasons for like-places were categorized into three themes: functions (physical, social, learning, and everyday activities), emotions (belonging, healing, and aesthetics), and physical characteristics; (3) both middle and high school students regarded restroom as the place that they disliked most; (4) the reasons for dislike-places included physical conditions, atmosphere, person-related, subject-related, and circumstances such as the happening of violence or punishment. These may provide educators, parents, school architects and administrators with practical considerations needed for making school a better place for students at secondary schools.