Understanding effective elements on increasing meaning levels received by students and their relationship with their ideal condition

Educational spaces, which take up a large part of students' daily time, are not created merely to meet educational needs, but should include the various aspects of student interaction and the physical environment that give rise to a sense of belonging to the school. This feeling will connect the person with the place. Students who are studying in these educational environments can understand the meaning of it, they can communicate better with that environment. Today, the study of the sense of belonging in schools has received less attention and mostly the educational needs of students have been taken into account. Addressing this special issue and examining it among high school students is very important because of their awared behavior. At the present, the relationship between students and the school environment is very important; therefore, the purpose of this article is understanding the effective components of the environment. It seems that one of the factors influencing this relationship is the meaning of the environment.

The data collection was don based on a survey method, using both questionnaires and direct observation and mapping observations. The research method according to open-ended questions is a combination of consecutive ones. The analysis stage also relies on the results of the questionnaire to identify their relationship with the characteristics of space.

Data collection was done through survey and open and closed questionnaires and direct students’ behavior observation. The questionnaire was developed and analyzed in 6 qualitative sections.

The results of the research indicate that the effect of form-spatial school features on student's belongingness is higher than other environmental factors, due to semantic capabilities. In other words, in various levels of environment’s meanings, the fourth and fifth levels of meaning, which are considered to be the symbolic meaning, are more important than other levels of meaning for students, and its cause is largely rooted in the value and emotional meanings of space. In fact, there is, a completely direct relationship between the semantic levels of changed function of non-profit school space and the ideal situation of students in educational spaces. In other words, the emotional and perceptual components of the school environment can better communicate with the student's mental state if they use the symbolic levels of meaning in space.