Vol. 2 (2) (2020) 68-74 IJOLAE | p-ISSN 2655-920x, e-ISSN 2656-2804 68 The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong Astrid Karina Wingard1, Hardika Dwi Hermawan2, Vita Rosiana Dewi3 1Faculty of Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 2Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 3College of Business and Economics, the Australian National University, Australia DOI: 10.23917/ijolae.v2i2.9350 Received: November 25th, 2019. Revised: December 15th, 2019. Accepted: December 25th, 2019 Available Online: January 2nd 2020. Published Regularly: July 1st, 2020 Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate some perceived factors in students reading achievement. This study focuses on the correlation between fourth graders’ safety feeling inside school environment and their reading enjoyment towards their reading achievement. Descriptive analysis used in this study and data draws from Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016. The participants were 3349 students in their fourth year of schooling in Hong Kong where 49.1% were girls and 50.9% were boys. The range of the age was 8 to 15 years old. The result showed the importance of creating a safe school environment. Besides students’ perception of their school environment, students’ reading enjoyment was another factor which influenced reading achievement. Students’ perception of the school environment and students’ enjoyment in reading also affected students’ reading achievement, but the perception of reading is boring gave stronger effect to the reading achievement. Keywords: student’s perception, school environment, student’s enjoyment, reading achievement Corresponding Author: Astrid Karina Wingard, Faculty of Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Email: astridwingard@gmail.com 1. Introduction Reading is generally recognized as one essential part of human life. Ng, Renandya, and Chong (2011) interpreted reading as the process of making meaning from written texts. A similar definition for reading compre- hension is given by Israel & Duffy (2009) and Roe et al (2005) that reading comprehension is to make meaning of what we read. This def- inition means that it is not enough to decode the letters and words, one has to add knowledge and meaning to what is read (Roe, 2005). Therefore, reading achievement be- comes one indicator to measure the success rate of students’ academic performance. The existence and function of schools play a sig- nificant role in student development and aca- demic performance as a large amount of chil- dren’s active time has been spent at school. Previous research conducted by Nijs et al (2013) concludes that perceived school safety is strongly and independently associated with self-reported mental health problems. These mental health problems have opportunities to influence student learning achievement. Other researchers, Wang and Holcombe (2010), say in their study that students’ perceptions of their school can contribute to their level of ac- ademic engagement (cited in Côté-Lussier and Fitzpatrick, 2016, p.548). This means that Indonesian Journal on Learning and Advanced Education http://journals.ums.ac.id/index.php/ijolae mailto:astridwingard@gmail.com IJOLAE | p-ISSN 2655-920x, e-ISSN 2656-2804 Vol. 2 (2) (2020) 68-74 69 The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong schools must build positive environment to support students’ reading achievement. On the other hand, the feelings of stu- dents themselves must be considered as other factors that also influence their reading achievement. Malanchini, et al. (2017) inves- tigated children’s motivation for reading which the enjoyment experience of reading is included as one of the motivation factors. These children come from different ethnici- ties. The study showed there is a relationship between student enjoyment in reading and their reading achievement. This result is in line with the findings from Preece & Levy (2018) and Retelsdorf et al (2011) in their re- search. This study is designed to investigate some perceived factors in order to know whether they have an effect on students read- ing achievement or not, but this study will fo- cus on the following research questions are (a) does students’ feeling of safety in school af- fect their reading achievement, (2) does stu- dents’ reading enjoyment influence their read- ing achievement, and (c) do students’ feeling of safety in school and students’ reading en- joyment affect their reading achievement. To answer the research questions, some tests will be conducted to examine these hy- potheses: Feeling safe at school is associated with positive gains at students’ reading achievement (Hypothesis 1); Enjoyable read- ing makes a good contribution to reading achievement (Hypothesis 2). The following hypotheses were formulated and tested at a 0.05 level of significance. 2. Method This study draws on data from Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016. The participants were 3349 students in their fourth year of schooling in Hong Kong (Mullis et al., 2017) where 49.1% were girls and 50.9% were boys. The range of the age was 8 to 15 years old, but most of them were 10 years old. Outcome and predictor variables of this study are described below: a. Reading Achievement In the current analysis, the outcome or dependent variable is students reading scores in PIRLS 2016. It was reported in the form of plausible values. There were five plausible values in reading, but the analysis was lim- ited to the first plausible value. b. Students’ Perception of the School En- vironment. Students reported to what extent they agreed with the statement “I feel safe when I am at school”. The answers were rated into four categories as follows: 1 = very agree, 2 = agree, 3 = disagree, 4 = very disagree. c. Students’ Enjoyment in Reading Students were asked what they think about reading. They reported to what extend they agreed that (i) I enjoy reading; and (ii) I think reading is boring (1 = very agree, 2 = agree, 3 = disagree, 4 = very disagree; Cronbach’s α = .72). 3. Results and Discussion a. Descriptive Statistics Figure 1 shows a normal distribution of Hong Kong students’ achievement in reading. The average reading score is 573. A center point of 500 was set by the IEA with standard deviation of 100 (see Mullis et al., 2017). Us- ing one-sample t-test, Hong Kong students performed significantly better at 73 points higher than the average international test score since it showed a positive sign. Vol. 2 (2) (2020) 68-74 IJOLAE | p-ISSN 2655-920x, e-ISSN 2656-2804 70 The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong Figure 1. Distribution of Fourth Graders’ Reading Achievement in Hong Kong There are some variables that are predicted to be involved in influencing student reading achievement, such as students’ safety feeling, reading enjoyment, and reading boredom. The description of each variable is presented in table 1 and for more detailed obtained answers, in figure 2. Most of the students were feeling safe when they were at school (M = 1.64, Standard Deviation = .84). When they were asked about their thought towards reading, from 3287 valid participants, the trend exhibits enjoyable feeling for reading (M = 1.72, Standard Deviation = .93) in line with disagreement feeling to the statement “reading is boring” (M = 3.24, Standard Deviation = .99) obtained from 3291 valid participants. Table 1. Students’ Feeling towards School Safety and Reading Enjoyment Mean Standard Deviation N valid missing Feeling safe at school 1.64 .84 3294 55 Enjoy reading 1.72 .93 3287 62 Reading is boring 3.24 .99 3291 58 Figure 2. Total Numbers Obtained of Each Predictor Variable 1807 1008 322 157 1765 904 390 228262 516 682 1831 AGREE A LOT AGREE A LITTLE DISAGREE A LITTLE DISAGREE A LOT I feel safe when I am at school I enjoy reading Reading is boring IJOLAE | p-ISSN 2655-920x, e-ISSN 2656-2804 Vol. 2 (2) (2020) 68-74 71 The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong b. Findings The analyses below are designed to answer all the research questions regarding the effects of students’ perception of the school environment towards reading achievement, research question about the correlation between students’ enjoyment in reading and their reading achievement, and the correlation among them all. 1) Feeling Safety at School and Reading Achievement As the aforementioned description, students in Hong Kong were feeling safe at school (M = 1.64) and their reading achievement average is 573. Thus, to know the relation between these two variables, linear regression was used, and three dummy independent variables were made: those who very agree to the statement “I feel safe when I am at school” (dummy 1), collapsed values of agree and disagree (dummy 2) and very disagree to the statement (dummy 3). In the test, dummy 3 became the base. The test result presented that 2.1% of the variance of the dependent variable is explained by independent variables. The t- value for dummy 1 and dummy 2 was more than 1.96 which means both dummy variables had a statistically significant impact on the reading achievement at a 95% level of confidence. Therefore, we can accept the alternative hypothesis that there is a relationship between reading achievement and students’ feeling safety at school, and then reject the null hypothesis. 2) Reading Enjoyment and Reading Achievement A one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to investigate the effect of reading enjoyment towards reading achievement. There are two predictor variables as explained in section 3.2.3. Separately, each independent variable is tested against reading achievement. The independent variable of “I enjoy reading” statement significantly affected reading achievement at p<.05 level. The scores for the four Likert-scale groups: F(3,3283)=68.175, p=.000. Since ANOVA cannot present within which groups the difference is, then another test, Post-Hoc had been run. The Post-Hoc comparisons using Bonferroni test presented the mean score for all four categories were significantly different from each other: Category 1 (M = 584.79, SD = 59.66), Category 2 (M = 568.10, SD = 58.45), Category 3 (M = 557.84, SD = 63.58), and Category 4 (M = 532.71, SD = 56.45). Another independent variable with the statement “Reading is boring” was also scaled into four categories of to what extent the students agree about the statement, but the value had been recorded since it has a negative answer meaning (Category 1: very disagree, category 2: disagree, category 3: agree, and category 4: very agree). The one- way ANOVA test presented that there was statistically significantly different at the p<.05 level for the four scaled-category: F (3,3287) = 98.77, p =.000. The same step was done as the previous independent variable. Post-Hoc comparisons using Bonferroni test indicated that the mean score of Category 1 (M = 584.99, SD = 58.70) did not significantly differ from Category 2 (M = 576,68, SD = 54.99), but statistically significantly differed from Category 3 (M = 547.31, SD = 61.67) and Category 4 (M = 533.25, SD = 64.08). Category 3 and 4 were significantly different from Category 1 and 2 but did not significantly differ to each other. Vol. 2 (2) (2020) 68-74 IJOLAE | p-ISSN 2655-920x, e-ISSN 2656-2804 72 The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong Table 2. Regression Coefficients for Plausible Value: Overall Reading PV1 3) Effects of Feeling Safety at Schools and Reading Enjoyment on Reading Achievement Multiple regression analysis was designed to investigate students reading achievement using the enter method. The regressors were students’ safety feeling and their personal feeling towards reading. The overall regression model was statistically significant, F(3, 3269)=110.99, p<.005. With the R²=.092, it exhibited 9.2% of the variance in reading achievement can be predicted by the independent variables. In the regression coefficients, as can be seen at table 2, from the Standardized Beta (β) column, reading is boring (recoded) variable had the strongest effect to the reading achievement and then followed by enjoying reading and feeling safe at school. Now, let us move to the B column. Here, the model showed that for every one unit increase in feeling safe at school, the reading achievement will decrease by 5.23 units. Also similarly, for variable reading is boring (recoded), for every one unit increase in this variable, the dependent variable decreases by 13.08 units. Then, with every one unit increase in enjoy reading, it will decrease the reading achievement by 6.88 unit. c. Discussion The current study investigated some fac- tors that account for Hong Kong students reading achievement, with its focus on the correlation between fourth graders’ safety feeling inside school environment and their reading enjoyment towards their reading achievement. Even though Hong Kong is one of the regions that has developed in term of ICT in education (Hermawan, 2019), but reading achievement and school environment play an essential role in the quality of educa- tion itself. The analyses represented correlation be- tween students’ perception of their school en- vironment against their reading achievement through reading comprehension test. The per- ception here was narrowed into feeling of be- ing safe at school. This result showed the im- portance of creating a safe school environ- ment because to gain a productive learning requires a safe environment (Diamanduros & Downs, 2011; Ferrin, 2011; Stephan, 2016). This study also confirms what Wang and Hol- combe (2010) said in their study that students’ perceptions of their school can contribute to their level of academic engagement (cited in Côté-Lussier and Fitzpatrick, 2016, p.548). Hence, it is highly encouraged for the schools to keep on creating a safe school environment for learners to be able to obtain better aca- demic achievement (Lopez, 2019; Mooney et al, 2010). Besides students’ perception of their school environment, students’ reading enjoy- ment is also predicted as another factor which can influence reading achievement. The cor- relation between these variables was ex- plained through ANOVA and Post-Hoc test. The statistically significant difference means students’ feeling of enjoyment in reading af- fects their reading achievement. Unfortu- nately, detailed explanations of what factors Model Unstandardized Coefficients β p B SE 1 (Constant) 616,71 2,81 ,000 Feeling safe at school -5,23 1,25 -,072 ,000 Reading is boring (recoded) -13,08 1,26 -,209 ,000 Enjoy Reading -6,88 1,37 -,104 ,000 IJOLAE | p-ISSN 2655-920x, e-ISSN 2656-2804 Vol. 2 (2) (2020) 68-74 73 The Effects of Students’ Perception of the School Environment and Students’ Enjoyment in Reading towards Reading Achievement of 4th Grades Students in Hong Kong can make students enjoy reading from the per- spective of the students themselves are lim- ited, but there are a number of predictable ways that can make students interested and enjoy reading as compiled by OECD (2012). Chiu & McBride-Chang (2006), Smith et al (2012) and Hochweber & Vieluf (2018) said that gender differences associated with read- ing achievement. Hence, this case can be in- vestigated for future research. The last research question of this study was answered through testing those two pre- dictor variables together with the outcome variable aimed to know the correlation among them. As predicted, in the multiple regression test, the result was statistically significant. Then, it can be concluded that students’ per- ception of the school environment and stu- dents’ enjoyment in reading affected students’ reading achievement, but the perception of reading is boring gave stronger effect to the reading achievement. Wayne et al (2013), Gietz & Mcintosh (2014), and Firdausy et al (2019) also stated that student perception and learning environment have a relationship with academic performance, including reading achievement. 4. Conclusion The results showed a correlation between students’ perception of their school environ- ment against their reading achievement through reading comprehension test. The per- ception was narrowed into feeling of being safe at school. This result also showed the im- portance of creating a safe school environ- ment because to gain a productive learning re- quires a safe environment. Students’ percep- tion of their school environment, students’ reading enjoyment is also predicted as another factor which can influence reading achieve- ment. The correlation between these variables was explained through ANOVA and Post- Hoc test. The statistically significant differ- ence means students’ feeling of enjoyment in reading affects their reading achievement. Students’ perception of the school environ- ment and students’ enjoyment in reading of this study affected students’ reading achieve- ment, but the perception of reading is boring gave stronger effect to the reading achieve- ment. Further studies are needed by increas- ing the number of predicted variables to en- hance the research accuracy level. 5. References Cote-Lussier, C., & Fitzpatrick, C. (2016). 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