What are quality educational environments?: Contributions and perspectives from Portuguese pupils participating in the schools2030 international programme

Abstract

Schools2030, promoted by Aga Khan Foundation, is an educational programme working with 1,000 schools in 10 countries, aimed at identifying the most effective ways to improve learning and access to quality education for all children and young people. This is being done by implementing a bottom-up model in schools that empowers and encourages teachers to create innovative solutions to the learning challenges faced by children and young people in their classrooms. In Portugal, the programme is being developed in 17 school clusters, involving around 100 schools, and the research team represented by the authors is responsible for the programme’s monitoring and external evaluation. A central concept of Schools2030 is the quality of the educational environment. In this sense, the aim was to (re)create the elements comprising a quality educational environment as an essential dimension in the relational and educational development of all those who "inhabit" the school, particularly its pupils. This is a key object of analysis and intervention - improving the quality of educational environments - within the programme itself. In order to better understand the different perspectives on this concept, we conducted focus groups with head teachers, regular teachers and pupils. In this paper we choose to focus on the pupils' perspective and their perceptions of school and their relationship with school. Our data came from four focus groups held in 2023, two with 10-year-old pupils and the other two with 15-year-old pupils, covering a total of 19 pupils from 3 school clusters participating in the programme in Portugal. The aim of these focus groups was to obtain in-depth information and contributions to the analysis of learning processes and educational environments, based on reflection and debate among pupils. Accordingly, we emphasise the 'voice' of the pupils, which allows us, among other things, to enrich the definition of what quality educational spaces should be. Some of the dimensions of this characterisation, based on these findings, can be summarised as spaces of well-being, spaces of autonomy and involvement, and spaces of participation and equity. The focus groups with pupils also allowed us to explore the meanings of educational outcomes at schools, more specifically about learning at school and with teachers, time (for learning), evaluating what has been learnt, and emotions and attitudes. One of the most important conclusions is that pupils perceive the importance of the way teachers manage to build close, empathetic relationships and pay attention to their problems in their school results. The pupils' awareness of this dimension in their performance and relationships at school is very high. The pupils also feel that curricula and teaching content should be made livelier and more illustrative, using examples and stories that are more in line with their own experiences. They also emphasise the need for more personalised educational models, activities that are participatory, practical, in contact with nature and innovative compared to lectures, and the teaching of values and socioemotional skills in addition to cognitive skills. The collected testimonies will enable establishing a more precise baseline for the intervention. The analysis of the results should contribute to a deeper understanding of the perspectives of 10 and 15- year-olds on school, its functions and educational environments that are conducive to better learning and provide indications for possible changes.