Using children’s drawings to examine student perspectives of classroom climate in a school-within-A-school elementary school

This study examines student perceptions of classroom climate at a school-within-a-school (SWAS) elementary school located in the southeastern United States. The elementary school contains a school for students identified as highly gifted within a neighborhood school. Researchers utilized drawings to determine students’ perceptions of their classrooms using an intentionally openended prompt that allowed students to focus on the aspects of their classroom they found most compelling. Classrooms with a climate that fostered community proved to be important to students, and they made connections between community and active engagement in academic tasks. Students in the 2 SWAS programs perceived the nature of a community-focused classroom climate differently; in the gifted program, collaboration and group work were privileged, whereas those in the neighborhood program expressed like-mindedness and/or a notion of group connectedness.