Whether school climate is influential on adolescent mental health is an important question because mental health problems are a significant cause of disability and commonly arise in adolescence. However, these student- and school-level associations reduced considerably when also adjusting for baseline mental health. They are on the frontlines of managing the school climate daily, and their behavior can set positive or negative examples for students. Studies show that students who perceive their school climate as positive are less likely to report feeling distressed or hopeless. A positive and inclusive environment helps to promote emotional well-being, reducing anxiety and depression among students. When schools create a positive climate, they foster safer and more supportive environments where respect, value, and connection are encouraged.
Mental Wellbeing
Additionally, parental engagement has a direct impact on the school climate. Their involvement can greatly contribute to a positive, inclusive, and welcoming environment. Parents and community members play a significant role in shaping the school climate. They can also provide opportunities for students to take on leadership roles, such as being a class representative or a member of the student council. Educators need to be aware that small words and actions carry great weight; promoting respect among peers through role modeling will go a long way toward making students feel safe.
After the behavior matrix is defined, the school staff creates a plan for teaching these expectations and how to practice them in all the critical areas of the school. Additionally, this chapter discusses the lived experiences of school counselors regarding PBIS and how it aligns with school counseling programs. This section provides an overview of evidence-based programs, such as the Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS) and comprehensive school counseling programs. The search was limited when discovering other evidence-based school-wide programs, as most interventions are implemented within a multi-tiered system to produce a desirable outcome. Furthermore, strategies using the https://www.nysed.gov/accountability/evidence-based-interventions tenets of SLT in lessons are provided to assist with aligning tier-1 PBIS and school counseling programs. Holloway suggested that self-efficacy is vital in understanding individuals’ associations and environments.
Wellbeing Interventions in Schools
How do we create a positive climate that will indeed affect student achievement and develop student and teacher efficacy? Use of the WHITS-P in schools and across education systems has the potential to guide strategic and planning decisions leading to a proactive (rather than reactive) approach to school improvement that makes changes at the level of culture. In addition, the inclusion of a slightly longer version for years 5 and 6 allows schools to examine perceptions of Affirming Cultural Diversity and includes additional items in some constructs. Therefore, future studies might consider examining the efficacy of using the school climate factors delineated in the WHITS-P as process criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of programs. Whilst school climate factors are rarely used as measures of effectiveness (Bear et al., 2011), many programs and interventions aimed at preventing bullying, behaviour problems and class management make improving school climate a focus (e.g. Wang et al., 2013). Although the researchers went to great lengths to establish a valid and reliable school climate survey, as in all studies, there are some limitations.
Display student work, represent diverse cultures and identities, and create spaces that invite collaboration and quiet reflection. Positive Action provides adequate resources to facilitate teaching and support educators with their complex responsibilities. Regular professional development opportunities and collaborative reflection on teaching practices are essential to support educators. However, making lessons consistently engaging is challenging given the many demands teachers face daily. Employing character education lessons can have another positive impact on the community.
Instead, lasting school climate change begins with K-12 leaders developing a framework for continuous improvement within their strategic plans that can guide data-driven school climate efforts. However, improving school climate is no small feat, nor is it a one-time endeavor. By regularly assessing the perceptions and preferences of students, staff, and families, district leaders can better foster feelings of safety, connection, belonging, engagement, and, ultimately, success. In this chapter, we review the literature on various models of school climate, including topics related to measurement, data collection, data analysis, and decision-making, as well as prevention and promotion planning. The school climate literature emphasizes the importance of the collection of multi-informant data to increase the identification of needs for other evidence-based programming.
Relationships
- The survey and evidence of its psychometric properties are significant for researchers, schools, and education systems seeking to assess primary school students’ perception of the school climate.
- Table 1 provides the domain in which each scale falls, a scale description, and a sample item for each WHITS-P scale.
- Peer, teacher or parent reports would be useful in examining these relationships further as the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaires completed by parents and teachers are generally better predictors than those self-completed by adolescents (Goodman, Ford, Simmons, Gatward, & Meltzer, 2000).
Students who are prone to being involved in school activity are characterized by conscientiousness, agreeableness, and attitude to be engaged, but seem to have low satisfaction in relationship. Canonical correlations (Pearson’s r) within all the measures were analyzed, in order to identify the relationships within all the variables of interest. Descriptive statistics were computed for each scale, in order to have a full description of the group of participants and verify the metric features of the variables included in the analyses.