Criteria: Comprehensive review of School Climate literature with over 200 educational citations
Key Takeaway: Focusing on five integral components—Safety, Relationships, Teaching and Learning, Institutional Environment, and School Improvement Process—this research addresses the profound impact of positive school climate on student and teacher well-being, participation, academic achievement, and character development. Read on for significant insights, such as the surprising effectiveness of school climate initiatives over traditional “anti-bullying” programs.
Summation and Insights: This study reviewed a huge body of research on school climate in order to comprehensively assess the ways that our schools can become safer and more supportive spaces for both students and teachers. Five components of “School Climate” were identified as important contributing factors: Safety, Relationships, Teaching and Learning, Institutional Environment, and the School Improvement Process.
Research around Safety suggests that a top safety concern for students is bullying. The National School Climate Center has worked with thousands of schools and found that while adults (teachers, parents, administrators) rank bullying as a “milder” problem, students consistently report that bullying is a “severe” problem. Even in school areas that are rated as more dangerous, students are less likely to experience physical violence than they are bullying. As one might imagine, bullying often targets students for perceived difference, whether it is race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or cultural differences. A second consistent finding related to school climate and safety regards the enforcement of “rules and norms.” If students perceive both rules and their enforcement to be fair, there are better feelings about the school itself as well as correlations to lower suspension rates and a willingness to seek help for bullying incidents. Interestingly enough, some studies suggest that school climate initiatives are more effective in combating bullying problems than “anti-bullying education” efforts.
In the Relationships category, defined as how connected people feel to one another, positive relationships with both peers and teachers were associated with students feeling that the school climate was safe and caring, as well as lower disciplinary and behavioral problems and greater academic achievement. Another significant finding here was that positive school relationships were just as important for teachers as they were for students. When teachers felt supported at work and felt that they had quality peer relationships, they in turn contributed to positive school climate and fostered those crucially important teacher/student relationships. Research on “Relationships” in school systems also examined correlations between students’ race and ethnicity and their perception of school climate. Here, race itself does appear to be a significant factor in school climate perception. For example, one study found that students who were white, male, and economically advantaged rated school climate more positively than African American, female, and poorer students respectively. Another significant finding is that different aspects of school climate may matter differently to different cultural groups. For example, one research study reviewed in this category found that African American children regarded teacher child relations as the most important aspect of school climate, whereas Latino children were more prone to caring about things like praise of effort and the importance of moral order at school. Again, a key takeaway here is that various research studies reinforce the idea that diverse cultural groups may feel differently about school climate, as well as what matters the most about creating it.
When examining school climate through the lens of Teaching and Learning, it was found that a positive school climate can promote positive academic achievement. Healthy school climate also supports things that are conducive to better learning conditions, such as respect and more participatory and engaged behavior. Teaching and Learning was further examined through different modes of social, emotional, civic, and ethical education. Here, character education studies suggest that teaching lessons about morality and character alongside academics has a strong correlation with students receiving higher test scores. Service Learning also made a strong performance in this category, with its promotion of good citizenship and civic values. Service Learning can also give students the opportunity to apply classroom lessons to real-world contexts and to form meaningful opinions about government and social systems.
Institutional Environment also affects perceptions of school climate and can be examined through both school connectedness and the physical layout and resources of a school. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, school connectedness can be defined as “the belief by students that adults and peers in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals.” School connectedness is associated with violence prevention, less conduct problems, and lower rates of risky sexual violence and drug use behaviors. The physical environment of a school is also strongly related to perceptions of school climate. Here, students were more likely to report feeling unsafe in areas that were unsupervised by adults or teachers. The quality and routine care of school facilities also helped students to feel safe and connected to their school environment.
Finally, this research study examined schools implementing a School Improvement Process. One interesting finding here is that the implementation of school reform programs already has a higher chance of success in schools with a positive school climate. Character education programs once again came into play here, and school-based character programs that are holistically implemented can have a wonderful effect on helping students learn academic skills as well as moral sensibilities that spill over, so to speak, into creating a positive and sustainable school climate. One of the most important studies on school climate to date (a multiyear study in Chicago) identified “Relational Trust” as the most important aspect of a school improvement process/perceptions of positive school climate. Relational trust has four major components: support for teachers, safety and order, enhancing parent-school-community ties, and providing high quality instructional guidance.
These studies suggest that a positive school climate has a huge correlation with academic achievement, participation, formation of character, and general feelings of safety, inclusion, and connectedness. School climate also appears to be correlated positively with violence prevention in a number of forms and can have a profound impact on the physical and mental well-being of both students and teachers.
Year: 2013
Author: Amrit Thapa, Jonathan Cohen, Shawn Guffey, Ann Higgins-D’Alessan
Primary Author: Amrit Thapa: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/academics/faculty-directory/thapa