EXAMINING PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS’ PERCEPTIONS OF CLASSROOM CLIMATE USING THE CLASSROOM CLIMATE QUESTIONNAIRE AND CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS
EXAMINING PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS’ PERCEPTIONS OF CLASSROOM CLIMATE USING THE CLASSROOM CLIMATE QUESTIONNAIRE AND CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS

Summary/Abstract: Centering students’ voices in primary school settings has gained increased importance in recent years with the rise in the significance of children’s rights. Existing studies investigated students’ classroom climate perceptions via a qualitative (e.g., interviews or classroom observations) or a quantitative approach (e.g., self-reported questionnaires). However, in the case of international and national literature, a study discriminating the perspective differences produced by each approach to classroom climate is still lacking. Hence, following a mixed-method approach, our endeavour aims to fill this gap. In total, 68 fourth-grade primary school students from Romania (28 girls and 40 boys, aged 9-12 years old) answered the golden standard instrument in the field (i.e., Classroom Climate Questionnaire Primary – CCQ-P). Complementary, all the students made free-hand drawings of their classroom (i.e., the approach adopted following that of Kuzle and Gracin, 2021), which they further explained to the first author in a semi-structured interview. We noticed both similarities and differences in how the two approaches revealed different aspects of children’s perspectives on classroom climate. In general, research participants understood their classroom climate in positive terms, a point shared across methodological approaches. Moreover, task orientation seemed to be the most pronounced dimension across approaches, since related CCQ-P scores were high, and students represented themselves as paying attention and working on specific tasks. However, regarding collaboration and involvement, whereas the CCQ-P revealed relatively high levels, drawings of children collaborating or actively engaging in communication with the teachers and other students were extremely rare, and the frontal organization of the teaching process dominated the sample. The current paper can contribute to a better understanding of the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches to classroom climate and consequentially to a more nuanced understanding of the minutiae of classroom climate in Romania and beyond.

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