Happy School Signs: A Phenomenological Study

As one of the leading factors shaping students’ conduct, school climate can make a significant contribution to creating happiness within schools and spreading it to the society. The present study was an attempt to identify the signs of a happy school structure based on students' perception of happy school. The Primary schools across Tehran city served as the field of study. The participants were selected through criterion sampling method. Data saturation was achieved in the 14th interview. The present qualitative article falls into the category of descriptive phenomenological studies. Semi-structured interviews and students' essays were used for data collection purposes. The collected data were analyzed through Colaizzi's seven-step method. "Code inspection and review "," eliciting and verifying the opinions of research fellows ", and "long-term immersion" were used in order to increase dependability, verifiability, reliability and accuracy of the data. The findings led to identification of 32 signs, 8 sub-themes and 3 themes namely "executive-management theme", “the school climate theme" and the “psychological factors theme". The Identified themes contribute to in-depth perception and accurate identification of happy school signs in field studies of schools. According to the results, it can be concluded that students’ expectations of happy schools bears no comparison to the existing state of schools, therefore, it is increasingly important to consider immediate revisions and take premeditated measures to improve schools climate and move towards happy schools.