Classroom Climate

Definitional Considerations

Classroom climate is a perceived quality of the setting. It emerges in a somewhat fluid state from the complex transaction of many immediate environmental factors (e.g., physical, material, organizational, operational, and social variables). The climates of both the classroom and the school reflect the influence of a school's culture, which is a stable quality emerging from underlying, institutionalized values and belief systems, norms, ideologies, rituals, and traditions. And, of course, classroom climate and culture both are shaped by the school's surrounding and embedded political, social, cultural, and economic contexts (e.g., home, neighborhood, city, state, country).

Key concepts related to understanding classroom climate include:

• Social system organization
• Social attitudes
• Staff and student morale
• Power, control, guidance, support, and evaluation structures
• Curricular and instructional practices
• Communicated expectations
• Efficacy
• Accountability demands
• Cohesion
• Competition
• The “fit” between key learner and classroom variables
• System maintenance, growth, and change
• Orderliness
• Safety

Rudolph Moos (1979) groups such concepts into three dimensions for classifying human environments and has used them to develop measures of school and classroom climate. Moos's three dimensions are:

• 1.
  Relationship—the nature and intensity of personal relationships within the environment; the extent to which people are involved in the environment and support and help each other.
• 2.
  Personal development—basic directions along which personal growth and self-enhancement tend to occur.
• 3.
  System maintenance and change—the extent to which the environment is orderly, clear in expectations, maintains control, and is responsive to change.

The concept of classroom climate implies the intent to establish and maintain a positive context that facilitates classroom learning, but in practice, classroom climates range from hostile or toxic to welcoming and supportive and can fluctuate daily and over the school year. Moreover, because the concept is a social psychological construct, different observers may have different perceptions of the climate in a given classroom. Therefore, for purposes of his early research, Moos (1979) measured classroom environment in terms of the shared perceptions of those in the classroom. Prevailing approaches to measuring classroom climate use teacher and student perceptions; external observer's ratings and systematic coding; and/or naturalistic inquiry, ethnography, case study, and interpretative assessment techniques (Fraser, 1998; Freiberg, 1999).

Importance of Classroom Climate

Classroom climate is seen as a major determiner of classroom behavior and learning. Understanding how to establish and maintain a positive classroom climate is seen as basic to improving schools.

Research suggests significant relationships between classroom climate and such matters as student engagement, behavior, self-efficacy, achievement, social and emotional development, principal leadership style, stages of educational reform, teacher burnout, and overall quality of school life (Fraser, 1998; Freiberg, 1999). For example, studies report strong associations between achievement levels and classrooms that are perceived as having greater cohesion and goal direction and less disorganization and conflict. Research also suggests that the impact of classroom climate may be greater on students from low-income homes and groups that often are discriminated against.

Given the nature of classroom climate research, cause and effect interpretations remain speculative. The broader body of research on organizational [Page 90]climate does suggest that increasing demands for higher achievement test scores and reliance on social and tangible rewards to control behavior and motivate performance contribute to a classroom climate that is reactive and over-controlling (Mahony & Hextall, 2000).

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