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Journal of Beijing Normal University(Social Sciences) ›› 2020, Vol. 0 ›› Issue (6): 15-28.

• Psychology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Definition and Measurement of School Climate and Its Relationship with Students' Development:A review and prospect

LI Beilei, ZHANG Lili, LIANG Juan, ZHOU Nan, DENG Linyuan   

  1. Faculty of Education,BNU,Beijing 100875,China
  • Received:2020-04-07 Online:2020-11-25 Published:2020-12-14

Abstract: School climate was widely recognized as one of the key school characteristics that can reflect students' school experiences in all aspects.There has been a growing interest in school climate in the recent few decades.Therefore,it was of great significance to systematically review the research of school climate on its definition,measurement and its relationship with students' development.As a complex multi-faceted construct,school climate was defined as a kind of organizational climate,a kind of social environment and the social-psychological climate of school from three perspectives.A number of studies have extensively examined the direct effects on student's development and the interaction effects of the overall school climate.All the findings confirmed the close positive connection between school climate and students' development.The differential effects of school climate on developmental outcomes for different student groups were also found,which was mainly reflected in the protective effect of a good school climate on disadvantaged students and the intensifying effect of a negative school climate on the adverse development of disadvantaged students.In future researches on the school climate,we should pay attention to evaluating it as a multi-dimensional dynamic variable,constructing hierarchical models and multiple factors interactions model to deeply explore the mechanism underlying the association between school climate and student development,and implementing evidence-based intervention studies.

Key words: school climate, definition, measurement, students' development

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