Increasing primary school students’ connectedness based on spatial affordances of the schools

The "sense of belonging" in architecture is formed in the interaction between man and the environment in environmental psychology and environmental design. By generalizing the concept of belonging based on Dehkhoda’s dictionary, one of the aspects of the sense of belonging means knowing oneself belonging to the place and the society with which human identity is defined. In children, the sense of belonging to the family and the home as innate institutions of the child's emotional and spatial dependence are at the peak of the concept of attachment. After the children attend school, the family and teachers, as well as the place and body of school for the second social and physical institution, must continue and complement the sense of social and spatial belonging. The concept of a sense of belonging is very important for the second place where students spend a lot of time. The current study expresses the concept of primary school students’ connectedness and tries to define and analyse school environment affordances to increase the connectedness.

The research method is qualitative based on library and case studies. The case studies have been chosen from two categories: initial cases and the ones from abroad so that a comparative comparison would be done.

As the comparative comparison revealed the intersection of the two kinds of case studies focus is on open space or yard. The different between them is that in abroad cases space affordances refer to social interaction, hominess and controlled career while in Iranian cases they refer to religious social interactions and athletic acts. 

As the results show, the affordances of Iranian schools should be better in increasing connectedness by re-designing these elements: schools entrance, schools wall which link to community, better yards, dynamic corridors, multipurpose classrooms, etc. Reviewing these elements should be followed both in theory and practice. Thus, more student participation is considered as an important social factor and a kind of guarantee to increase their sense of belonging to the school, and schools should provide their physical capabilities for more socialization of students and teachers as members of the school family. Also, due to the importance of the role of open spaces in schools, it is necessary to re-design school yards to meet safe and comfortable facilities and revive students' safe mobility in them.