Democratic School Climate and Sense of Community in School: A Multilevel Analysis

This study examines individual- and school-level predictors of sense of community in school among adolescents. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the relationships between individual (demographics, control and monitoring by parents, and perception of democratic school climate), class, and school characteristics (mean democratic school climate, demographics, activities, school size, public/private governance of the school, and facilities) and students' sense of community in the school. Data were analyzed using a three-level model based on 4,092 10- to 18-year-old students nested within 248 classes (across three grade levels: 6th, 8th, and 10th grade level, where the median age was 11, 13, and 15, respectively) in 134 schools in the Veneto region of northeast Italy. Individual and contextual measures of the perception of a democratic school climate, modeled at the individual, class, and school levels simultaneously, were each significant predictor of school sense of community. More parental monitoring and less parental control were also predictive at the individual level. School-level SES predicted between school variation in sense of community, controlling for individual student SES and other student and school-level predictors. School size, facilities (physical spaces resources), level of interaction of the school with the community, public, or private governance, and number of extracurricular activities offered were all nonsignificant. The study demonstrates significant variation in school sense of community at the student, class, and school levels and the important role played by democratic school practices, such as student participation in making rules and organizing events, freedom of expression, and the perceived fairness of rules and teachers, in determining this variable.     

School climate and ethnic‐racial identity in school: A longitudinal examination of reciprocal associations

The messages youth receive in schools about how they matter as individuals and as members of ethnic‐racial groups are influential in constructing their developing ethnic‐racial identities (ERI). However, the developing ERI students hold also have a role in shaping their experiences at school. The current study examined the longitudinal and reciprocal association between ERI (exploration and resolution) and school climate (support for cultural pluralism and teacher supportiveness) among 491 Black, Latino, and White middle school youth (M_age = 12.03, SD = 1.05, range: 11–17) in the Midwest. Cross‐lagged analyses revealed that greater perceptions of support for cultural pluralism within the school predicted greater exploration and resolution at later time points for all students. Moreover, greater exploration and resolution among White students was predictive of greater perceptions of support for cultural pluralism at the school. Higher quality teacher–student relationships predicted greater engagement in ERI exploration for all youth. The findings highlight the importance of school climate in helping shape ERI among youth attending a culturally diverse school and the role of such youth in shaping the climate at their school.     

Sense of community,civic engagement and social well‐being in Italian adolescents

This study investigates the relationship between sense of community, civic engagement and social well‐being in a sample of Italian adolescents. Participants were 14–19 year‐old high school students (N = 566) from two demographically distinct cities. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing sense of community, social well‐being (Keyes, 1998 ), involvement in structured group activities (group membership) and civic engagement. Results showed that involvement in formal groups is associated with increased civic involvement and increased sense of community. Sense of community predicts social well‐being and explains some of the association between civic engagement and social well‐being. Findings suggest that, to increase social well‐being, it is important to provide adolescents with more opportunities to experience a sense of belonging to the peers' group and promote prosocial behaviours in the community context. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

School violence and teacher professional disengagement

Background. Most studies of school violence have focused on students. Consequently, precursors and consequences of violence experienced by teachers are less well documented. Previous research indicates that (a) verbal victimization, student misbehaviour and perceived violence at school impair teacher emotional well‐being, (b) support from principal and colleagues reduces these difficulties and fosters well‐being, (c) well‐being impacts on professional involvement. However, it is still not clear how those variables relate to each other. Aims. To test and compare – through structural equation modelling – two models of the relationships between perceived school support, exposure to school violence, subjective well‐being and professional disengagement. To test – through multigroup analysis – the buffering effect of school support between school violence and well‐being. Sample. Participants in this study were 487 French‐speaking teachers (57% female) randomly selected from 24 secondary schools in Belgium. Method. Participants completed a questionnaire on school leadership, relationships with colleagues, verbal victimization, students' misbehaviour, perceived violence, depression, somatization, anxiety and professional disengagement. Results. The results support a model in which perceived school support has a direct effect on exposure to school violence, subjective well‐being and professional disengagement, while the effect of school violence on disengagement is totally mediated by well‐being. No evidence of a moderating effect of school support was found. Conclusions. The results of this study suggest that the negative emotional impact of some forms of school violence could be an important factor in a teacher's intention to leave, and that school support could be even more important for both teacher emotional well‐being and professional disengagement.     

School Perceptions of Children Raised by Grandparents

Increasing numbers of children raised by grandparents are students in schools. Their substitute family structure and precursors to the emergence of this family structure have implications for the children's school performance. Research suggests teachers view these children as at risk for difficult school functioning. The aforementioned judgment is problematic because teacher expectations, attributions, and biases are associated with stereotype threat that impacts student performance adversely. The author compares children raised by grandparents with children raised by parents and foster parents. The author examines the children's perceptions of their teachers' views of their school performance. He also examines the children's general feelings about school. Participants in the study were 6,550 students in Grades 6–8 from the nationally representative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. Nonparametric statistical analyses reveal children raised by grandparents believe teachers' view their school performance negatively when compared with children living with both parents. Strategies are described to improve the children's performance in school and to foster favorable teacher perceptions.     

Behavioral predictors of changes in social relatedness and liking school in elementary school

Normative trends and behavioral predictors for three dimensions of social relatedness were examined in a 6-month longitudinal study of 383 students in Grades 3, 4 and 5. Student reports of social relatedness (teacher supportiveness, school supportiveness, loneliness) and liking school indicated that students in each of the grades felt less positive about the school environment and liked school less in the Spring compared to the Fall. Girls reported higher levels of teacher supportiveness and school supportiveness. Reports of school supportiveness were lower among students at higher grade levels. Teacher-rated aggression predicted declines in students' perceptions of teacher supportiveness, increases in their sense of loneliness, and decreases in reports of liking school across the school year. Teacher-rated closeness predicted the maintenance of student perceptions of high levels of relatedness. Peer social preference predicted increases in loneliness. A path model indicated that the association between aggressive behavior and liking school was mediated by the association between aggressive behavior and perceptions of teacher supportiveness.     

父母参与作业的自主动机与小学生积极作业情绪:学生作业自主动机与教师支持的作用

采用问卷调查法,以702名小学生为被试,探讨了教师支持、父母参与作业的自主动机和学生家庭作业自主动机影响积极数学家庭作业情绪的内在作用机制。结果发现：（1）父母参与作业的自主动机是积极数学家庭作业情绪的预测因素;（2）学生家庭作业自主动机在父母参与作业的自主动机与积极数学家庭作业情绪之间起完全中介作用;（3）教师支持在父母参与作业的自主动机通过学生家庭作业自主动机影响其积极数学家庭作业情绪的过程中起有中介的调节作用。研究表明,教师支持、父母参与作业的自主动机和学生家庭作业自主动机均是学生积极家庭作业情绪的重要影响因素。     

汶川地震三年半后中学生的感恩对创伤后成长的影响：社会支持的中介作用

采用感恩问卷、社会支持问卷和创伤后成长问卷对汶川地震三年半后的376名中学生进行调查,考察其感恩与社会支持对创伤后成长的影响,并检验社会支持在感恩与创伤后成长之间的中介作用。结果发现：（1）灾后中学生的创伤后成长水平较高,其中自我觉知的改变与人际体验的改变水平高于生命价值观的改变水平,女生人际体验的改变水平高于男生,初一学生的创伤后成长水平相对低于高年级学生;（2）感恩和社会支持可显著地正向预测创伤后成长;（3）社会支持在感恩与创伤后成长之间起着部分中介作用。这表明,汶川地震三年半后中学生的感恩可以直接正向预测创伤后成长,也可通过社会支持正向影响创伤后成长。     

Enhancing School Engagement in At-Risk,Urban Minority Adolescents Through a School-Based,Adult Mentoring Intervention

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated whether a 5-month, adult mentoring intervention delivered by school personnel could enhance the school engagement of ninth grade urban minority adolescents. Compared to 20 at-risk students who did not receive an intervention, 20 at-risk students who were randomly assigned to mentoring exhibited significantly less decline during the first year of high school in perceived teacher support and decision making and were less likely to enter the discipline system. The effects were stronger and included sense of school belonging for participants who were “mentored as intended.” Moreover, mentee and mentor reports of relationship quality were associated with changes in mentored participants' school-related cognitions and behaviors. The findings indicate that adult mentoring may help to prevent normative declines in urban minority youths' school engagement.     

Teacher-student relationships and mental health help seeking behaviors among elementary and secondary students in Ontario Canada

This study examined associations between teacher-student relationship quality at school and teachers' responsiveness to students' emotional concerns in a classroom and (a) students' intention to seek help at school for mental health concerns and (b) mental health-related service use. Data for analyses came from the School Mental Health Survey, a cross-sectional survey of 31,120 grade 6–12 students, in 1968 classrooms, attending 248 schools in Ontario, Canada. Three-level (student, classroom, school) binary logistic regression was used to address the study objectives. Student ratings of the quality of teacher-student relationships and teachers' responsiveness were included as predictors, both at the individual student level and aggregated to represent a contextual level characteristic at the school and classroom level, respectively. At the student level, both teacher-student relationship quality and teacher responsiveness were positively associated with intentions to seek help at school among both elementary and secondary students (ORs ranged from 1.14–1.19 for relationships and 1.06–1.08 for responsiveness). Aggregated to the school level, teacher-student relationship quality was positively associated with mental health service use for secondary students (OR = 1.36, 95% CI [1.10, 1.69]). Positive and responsive teacher-student relationships were associated with help-seeking behaviors among students. Longitudinal studies are warranted to disentangle the temporality of these associations.     

School vandalism: individual and social context

Six hundred Israeli students responded to a questionnaire dealing with five motives for participating in vandalism: anger/frustration, boredom, erosion, aesthetics, and catharsis (Cohen, 1984). As we did not find a coherent pattern, we created a variable comprising all five motives: general motivation. Four factors accounted for motivation to participate in destructive behavior: perceived level of vandalism at school, attitude toward school, attitude toward teacher, and school anxiety. Punishment, father's level of education, sense of hope, and class level did not have an effect on motivation to participate in vandalism. It was concluded that the social context is a crucial element in school vandalism.     

Testing a model of minority identity achievement, identity affirmation, and psychological well-being among ethnic minority and sexual minority individuals

How is social identity related to psychological well-being among minority individuals? Drawing on developmental models of identity formation (e.g., Erikson, 1968) and on Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), we tested a conceptual model examining links between two key aspects of social identity and psychological well-being. We proposed that the association between identity achievement (exploring and understanding the meaning of one's identity) and psychological well-being is mediated by identity affirmation (developing positive feelings and a sense of belonging to one's social group). Across three studies, including ethnic minority high school students (Study 1), ethnic minority college students (Study 2) and lesbian and gay male adults (Study 3), we found strong support for the model. Results suggest that the process of exploring and understanding one's minority identity can serve as an important basis for developing positive feelings toward and an enhanced sense of attachment to the group, which can in turn confer psychological benefits for minority individuals. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Relationships Between Sense of School Community and Sense of Religious Commitment Among Christian High School Students

Quantitative analysis was used to determine whether relationships could be determined between sense of school community and sense of religious commitment among high school students (N = 71) based on their scores from separate instruments measuring the two constructs. Study results provide evidence that relationships do indeed exist and that differences between the two constructs can be identified within the data. Correlations between the two constructs were higher among girls than among boys, but there were no significant gender differences in either sense of community or in religious commitment. Implications of these results are discussed and recommendations for further research are provided.     

The anatomy of adolescents’ emotional engagement in schoolwork

This study explores the complexity of emotionally engaging schoolwork among students by analysing the interrelation between the affective and the social dimensions of emotional engagement. The data were collected from 78 Finnish sixth-grade (aged 12–13 years) and 89 eighth-grade (aged 14–15 years) students using picture tasks. The results show that the main elements of the affective dimension are the valuing of schoolwork and the enjoyment of learning, and the main element of the social dimension is a sense of belonging in terms of social cohesion and the support experienced by students. Furthermore, the results suggest that emotional engagement has internal dynamics: the affective and social dimension influence each other, regulating the students’ sense of emotional engagement. Consequently, neither of the dimensions alone result in strong, balanced emotional engagement. In addition, the results show that the relation between the affective and social dimension was more unbalanced in the peer interaction than in the teacher–student interaction at both grade levels. This suggests that tensions in the peer interaction at school make for a more complicated context in terms of emotional engagement.     

Perceived support provided by teachers and classmates and students' self-reported academic initiative

The aim of this study was to examine how perceived support provided by teachers and classmates in the school class environment related to students' academic initiative. Data were from a stratified sample of 13-year-old students (n = 1591) from the Norwegian part of the World Health Organization's survey of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC). Self-reported academic initiative varied across school classes with a difference (unexplained school class-level variance) of 12%. Perceived teacher support, defined as the provision of fairness and friendliness, varied substantially between classes. In two-level SEM analysis, a latent factor comprising pedagogical caring and autonomy support was substantially related to students' academic initiative at the class level. Perceived classmate support was significantly but moderately associated with academic initiative at the individual level.     

Exploring Collective Mathematical Creativity in Elementary School

This study combines theories related to collective learning and theories related to mathematical creativity to investigate the notion of collective mathematical creativity in elementary school classrooms. Collective learning takes place when mathematical ideas and actions, initially stemming from an individual, are built upon and reworked, producing a solution which is the product of the collective. Referring to characteristics of individual mathematical creativity, such as fluency, flexibility, and originality, this paper examines the possibility that collective mathematical creativity may be similarly characterized. The paper also explores the role of the teacher in fostering collective mathematical creativity and the possible relationship between individual and collective mathematical creativity. Many studies have investigated ways of characterizing, identifying, and promoting mathematical creativity. Haylock (1997), for example, and more recently, Kwon, Park, and Park (2006) assessed students' mathematical creativity by employing open‐ended problems and measuring divergent thinking skills. Leikin (2009) explored the use of multiple solution tasks in evaluating a student's mathematical creativity. These studies focused on an individual's mathematical creativity as it manifests itself in the solving of various problems. Yet students, acting in a classroom community, do not necessarily act on their own. Ideas are interchanged, evaluated, and built‐upon, often with the guidance of the teacher. The resultant mathematical creativity of an individual may be a product of collective community practice. The question which then arises is: Who is being mathematically creative, the individual or the community? This study focuses on the collective, not as the aggregation of a few individuals, but as a unit of study. Although some of the studies mentioned above acknowledged the effect of classroom culture on the development of mathematical creativity, and others considered the creative range of a group of students, those studies did not necessarily investigate mathematical creativity as a collective process or as the product of participating in a collective endeavour. This study combines theories related to collective learning and theories related to mathematical creativity to investigate the notion of collective mathematical creativity. The notion of collective creativity has been used to investigate creativity in several contexts including the work place (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006) and the global community (Family, 2003). In those cases, collective creativity was considered to occur when the social interactions between individuals yielded new interpretations that the individuals involved, thinking alone, could not have generated. Can the notion of collective creativity also be applied to the classroom community?     

Physical education and fostering relationships

Rather than presenting an academic paper, I wanted to simply examine my own perspective as a physical educator and classroom teacher and the importance of creating relationships with children. As a relatively new physical educator and recent Masters of Education graduate of the University of Toronto at OISE, but experienced classroom teacher working in a Toronto public school, spirituality at first appeared to be the farthest thing that affected both my life and the life of my classes. During the last two years, I became increasingly aware of the connection between physical education and feelings of enthusiasm and perseverance that have helped my students to see themselves in positive ways. The relationship developed between teacher and student had been apparent to me but I had not realised how important until I began graduate school and reflecting on both my classroom practice and how it had extended into the gymnasium. I often thought that physical education teachers tended to focus on the physical aspects and skills, but instead I found that it was indeed making a shared connection with my students through the various physical and everyday activities as of the highest importance. The shared connections encourage feelings of perseverance, and fit together between mind, body and spirit, which also encouraged active participation and success. What I had suspected to be true for the classroom really was true anywhere in the school community. My experiences as a physical educator and classroom teacher helped me create positive learning environments for children as they struggled with academic and physical activities. With this paper, I am asking academics to help teachers such as myself to understand the correlation to something we as teachers take for granted as part of our everyday teacher–student relationship.     

Social support, sense of community in school, and self-efficacy as resources during early adolescence: an integrative model

Influences of different sources of social support (from parents and friends), school sense of community, and self-efficacy on psychosocial well being (as measured by self-reported life satisfaction and psychological symptoms) in early adolescence were investigated in an integrative model. The model was tested using structural equation modeling. Multi-group comparisons were used to estimate differences between sex and age groups. The survey sample was composed of 7,097 students in Northern Italy (51.4% male) divided into three age cohorts (equivalent to 6th, 8th, and 10th grades with median ages of 11, 13, and 15). Findings obtained using SEM were consistent with self-efficacy and school sense of community mediating effects of social support on psychosocial adjustment. The multi-group comparison indicates a need for more complex developmental models and more research on how changing forms of support interact with each other as their effects also change during this important stage of the life. Implications for primary prevention and cross-cultural comparisons are discussed.     

Perpetration of Aggressive Behaviors Against Peers and Teachers as Predicted by Student and Contextual Factors

This study uses an ecological/contextual theory to explore how students’ perpetration of violence and other aggressive behaviors is associated with individual factors such as gender, age, and perception of school climate, and contextual factors such as cultural affiliation, school climate, and teacher characteristics among 4th‐ through 6th‐grade Jewish and Arab students in Israel. A questionnaire testing the use of aggressive behavior in school was completed by 120 homeroom teachers and 3,375 students. The results of the study show that levels of perpetration of violence and other aggressive behaviors vary between classes (15.20% directed against students and 7.33% directed against teachers). At the teacher–classroom level, higher levels of perpetration were found in classes with a lower percentage of girls and in classes with fewer or less clear and consistent policies to deal with aggressive behaviors. At the individual level, gender and perception of school climate were found to be associated with levels of perpetration of aggression. The “Discussion” section highlights the importance of improving school climate in order to deal more effectively with violence and aggressive behaviors in schools. Aggr. Behav. 38:253‐262, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.