| Juliette Berg
New York University
An Ecological Approach to Assessing School Climate and Its Relationship to Academic Processes and Outcomes
Low-income children, who are at greater demographic and behavioral risk, may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of a poor-quality school climate and often attend low-resourced schools with higher incidences of problematic relationships. Conversely, schools with a positive school climate may be protective and promote childrens academic engagement and success. Research that contributes to capturing the complexity of the school climate construct, made up of multiple, interrelated components of the school environment, and how it contributes to childrens academic trajectories, is needed. Using the NCES Social and Character Development (SACD) data set, the current project takes a multidimensional and multilevel approach to (1) operationalizing and understanding school climate through careful measurement work; then investigating (2) individual, classroom, and school characteristics that predict variation in childrens perceptions of school climate, and (3) the contribution of school climate to childrens academic engagement and academic competence over the course of 4th grade with a large, racially/ethnically diverse sample of children in 84 public elementary schools. Multivariate school climate models with empirically tested multilevel factor structures will be conceptually useful in gaining a better understanding of the role of the school learning environment in childrens development and in coming up with strategies to improve school functioning.
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