Exploring perceived sense of place and academic performance relationships in eighth graders

Sense of place has been widely studied within the field of environmental psychology. Determining how a person perceives their environment and creates a form of interpersonal attachment, which can sometimes run very deep, has been a frequent focus of researchers in recreational settings. Recently, other disciplines have begun using sense of place concepts in other settings, including educational settings. Thus far, the use of sense of place components has rarely been used in secondary school settings as a way to determine how adolescents perceive their educational environments and how this might be related to how they perform academically. This non-experimental, quantitative, correlational study aimed to explore the relationship between perceived sense of place and academic achievement for this population. The study sample was a group (N=47) of eighth grade adolescents, aged 12-14, drawn from a public middle school in California. This study was based on environmental psychology concepts of sense of place, focusing on the three subcomponents of sense of place: place attachment, place dependence, and place identity. This study used self-determination theory as a basis of inquiry. Surveys were used to collect data to determine the nature of relationships between sense of place and academic performance. Data analysis was completed using multiple linear regression methods. The results showed a statistically significant relationship between both place attachment and place identity with academic performance, but no statistically significant relationship between academic performance and place dependence. These results implied that a student's perceived emotional attachment to their school may have important implications for how they perform academically. The results also imply that a student may reach a level of depth in attachment to integrate it into the self as place identity, however, the student does not depend on the school as an aspect of their academic performance.