School Climate: a Review of the Construct,Measurement, and Impact on Student Outcomes

The construct of school climate has received attention as a way to enhance student achievement and reduce problem behaviors. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the existing literature on school climate and to bring to light the strengths, weakness, and gaps in the ways researchers have approached the construct. The central information in this article is organized into five sections. In the first, we describe the theoretical frameworks to support the multidimensionality of school climate and how school climate impacts student outcomes. In the second, we provide a breakdown of the four domains that make up school climate, including academic, community, safety, and institutional environment. In the third, we examine research on the outcomes of school climate. In the fourth, we outline the measurement and analytic methods of the construct of school climate. Finally, we summarize the strengths and limitations of the current work on school climate and make suggestions for future research directions.     

The Resources and Strategies Boys Use to Establish Status in a Junior School without Competitive Sport

The data in this paper comes from an ethnographically based study of Year 6 (10-11-year-old) boys in an English junior school. It investigates the resources and strategies used and created by the boys to classify themselves, and to construct and perform their masculinity in a tightly regulated school where competitive sport (including playground football) is prohibited for the majority of the school year. The paper considers the relationship between the formal school culture and informal pupil culture, and, in particular, the options open, limited and closed to the boys to construct their masculinities and establish status/prestige within their immediate peer group. One option open was being able to work hard in class without peer reprovement, but despite the limitation of competitive games/sport, the most favoured form of masculine status was still exemplified by embodied forms of athleticism and physicality. The paper also explores another way of gaining status, which was by a form of verbal abuse known as 'cussing': this was a pervasive and prevalent part of school life, and is viewed as another form of competitive, stylised performance.     

社会资本视野下的学校能力建设

当前,我国学校发展面临许多问题,其中组织能力建设是关键。文章从社会资本的角度,分析了社会资本与学校的关系,探讨了学校能力建设的内涵,着重论述了我国学校合作能力、筹资能力和公信能力建设的主要内容,并探讨了社会转型时期我国学校能力建设的发展方向。     

加强高中体育教学改革增强学生体质探讨

高中体育教学不仅能够培养学生的体育兴趣爱好,而且能够提高学生的身体素质。文章针对高中体育教学改革存在的问题,探讨增强青少年体质的对策:提高高中体育教学针对性,构建具体化高中体育教学课堂;提高高中体育教学专业性,构建科学化高中体育教学课堂;提高高中体育教学普遍性,构建全民化高中体育教学课堂。     

Teachers' and principals' sense of efficacy in elementary schools

In recent research on school improvement and effectiveness attention is paid to teachers' sense of efficacy. This research is focused on (a) teachers and (b) instructional tasks. Another restriction is that teachers' sense of efficacy is studied apart from the context in which it affects teacher behavior. This study introduces the Teachers' and Principals' Sense of Efficacy scale in pupil and school oriented tasks. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the context dependency of teachers' and principals' sense of efficacy. The central question is to what extent type of task and a staff member's position in the school organization are related to perceived self-efficacy. Besides, teachers' and principals' perceived school efficacy is introduced as ä context specific construct. In addition mediating effects of gender, work experience, and grade are analyzed. From the results it is concluded that the expansion of the sense of efficacy construct to principals as well as to school oriented tasks enhances its explanatory potential.     

The Case for a Middle School College Readiness Index: Rejoinder to Lazowski,Barron, Kosovich,and Hulleman and Mattern,Allen, and Camara

This rejoinder provides a reply to comments on a middle school college readiness index, which was devised to generate earlier and more nuanced readiness diagnoses to K‐12 students. Issues of reliability and validity (including construct underrepresentation and construct‐irrelevant variance) are discussed in detail. In addition, comments from Lazowski et al. and Mattern et al. provide a useful summary of areas where more college readiness research is needed. This rejoinder elaborates on those essential next steps, including deploying readiness indicators in school settings. Advances in the measurement of noncognitive skills will require more validity research using more contemporary data from authentic school settings. Still, the middle school college readiness index is a promising proof of concept, demonstrating the utility of diverse, early measures to support targeted, timely interventions.     

Validation of the Chinese version of the Sense of Self (SOS) Scale

This study explored the cross-cultural applicability of the Sense of Self (SOS) Scale in the Hong Kong Chinese cultural context. The SOS Scale is a 26-item questionnaire designed to measure students?? sense of purpose, self-reliance, and self-concept in school. Six hundred ninety-seven Hong Kong Chinese high school students participated in the study. Both within-network and between-network approaches to construct validation were adopted. Responses to this questionnaire are shown to have good internal consistency reliability, and support is provided for its construct validity in terms of its factorial structure and correlations with other educational outcomes such as learning strategies. In addition, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis also indicated invariance of the instrument across males and females, across students of different year levels, and across students from different types of school. Implications for cross-cultural research are discussed.     

Small School Ritual and Parent Involvement

Inner-city and rural schools have the common problem of increasingly distant (literally and figuratively) populations. Often these same schools desire parents to be involved in their children's education. If their involvement is to improve, parents may need to be socialized about school ways, even while the school transforms itself to address the same issues. School rituals can be vehicles for socializing parents as rituals construct changes of identity. In addition, rituals are useful for imagining how things could be otherwise. This paper presents the ritual socialization of parents into a school community at the annual school potluck of a small, rural elementary school. The ritual is analyzed for how the communication and construction of values and beliefs take place.     

Academic optimism of individual teachers: Confirming a new construct

Teacher sense of academic optimism is individual teachers' beliefs that they can teach effectively, their students can learn, and parents will support them so the teacher can press hard for learning. This new construct is grounded in the social cognitive and self-efficacy theories, social capital theory, work on school culture and climate and research on learned optimism. At the school level, collective academic optimism has been related to academic performance (Hoy, Tarter, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006b). The analyses tested and supported the validity and reliability of the construct at the individual level with elementary school teachers in a confirmatory factor analysis using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).     

The well‐being of teachers in Flanders: the importance of a supportive school culture

Research on the well‐being of teachers was conducted at the request of the Department of Education in Flanders, Belgium. The goals were: (1) to construct an instrument for the Education Inspectorate; and (2) to conduct a survey in order to identify school‐related conditions relevant for teachers’ professional well‐being. Based on literature and panel discussions with teachers and principals, a questionnaire was constructed, tested and subdivided in subscales following a factor analysis. The questionnaire was administered to a representative sample of elementary (covering both nursery and primary schools, children aged 3–12) and secondary school teachers. A multilevel analysis reveals how differences in scores can be explained at school level.     

新世纪高校校园文化的功能及塑造

本文从校园评论经的内涵及特征入手，论述了新世纪校园评论经的六大功能：导向功能；约束功能，创新功能，凝聚功能；激励功能，辐射功能，在此基础上，提出了新世纪现代高校如何进行校园文化（精神文化、规范文化、智能文化、智能文化和物质文化）的塑造。     

美国“中学学生参与调查”及其启示

美国"中学学生参与调查"以"学生参与"为核心调查内容,用以描述、理解全美中学教育活动中的学生参与情况,并为教学变革和学校改进活动提供信息。"中学学生参与调查"启示我们,应重视从学生的角度理解学校环境和教育改革,构建过程与结果并重的学生评价体系,并且应将大规模改革与基于个别学校调研结果的学校层面变革规划结合起来。     

A comparison of teachers' and school psychologists' perceptions of the importance of CHC abilities in the classroom

The broad cognitive abilities defined by the Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) theory have been shown to predict school achievement. However, the ecological validity of these constructs has not been studied in classroom settings. This study compares ratings by a sample of teachers (n = 53) and school psychologists (n = 86) of the importance of the CHC cognitive abilities in the classroom. The scale demonstrated adequate reliability (total scale α = .93, median α = .74), although evidence of construct validity varied between teachers and school psychologists. Both teachers and school psychologists rated quantitative ability, crystallized knowledge, and fluid reasoning as most important to school success. However, school psychologists rated short‐term memory and quantitative ability as more important than did the teachers. Importance of these differences for consultation is discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

《语文课程与教学论》实践教学体系的建构

《语文课程与教学论》重在培养学生语文教学能力,必须建构实践教学科学化体系：（一）学科间融合,构建课内实践教学体系;（二）课内外沟通,构建课外实践教学体系;（三）校内外联系,构建校外实践教学体系。     

Construction and validation of a classroom climate scale: a mixed methods approach

Students’ perceptions of their classroom climate have been found to relate significantly to students’ learning outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to construct an instrument for assessing elementary-school students’ perceptions of classroom climate, based on a previous instrument that was being used in Chile by a public national school mental health program as a tool for aiding teachers in improving classroom management, but which showed poor psychometric properties. We used a six-staged mixed-methods approach to construct relevant items and dimensions based on this measure and by adapting previously-existing scales. Item development included participatory construction of items involving program officials, focus groups with students, and a pilot study. The final version was administered to a sample of 6813 elementary-school students. Results showed adequate reliability and construct validity, convergent validity with school climate, and divergent validity with peer victimisation. When consequential validity was explored through semi-structured interviews with program officials and school administrators, we found that the instrument was being used as a tool for helping teachers to improve their school climate and management skills. We discuss the importance of constructing instruments using a mixed-methods approach.     

From elite traditions to middle-class cultures: images of secondary education in the anniversary books of a Finnish girls’ school, 1882–2007

This article concentrates on visual sources relating to secondary education, and asks how a collection of photographs can be understood and interpreted as part of the institutional and collective memory of one Finnish girls’ school. The photographs were published in the anniversary books of the school. They construct an entirety, where public memories are interwoven with individual and private reminiscences. The article examines how the traditions of jubilee books and the institutional setting of the school establish the boundaries for the visual narratives of the collection and how the self-image and identity of the school and its gendered nature are visualised in the corpus. The long period (1882–2007) opens up possibilities for studying how the changes in the Finnish education system and the alteration of the girls’ school to a co-educational school are presented in the photographs, and how these photographs create the imagery of gender, class, equality and co-education.     

萨乔万尼论学校道德领导

托马斯·萨乔万尼(Thomas J.Sergiovanni)是美国教育管理非主流派的重要代表。擅以教育管理的批判范型研究教育管理现象及问题。他最早提出了学校道德领导理论。其核心是学校领导要建构学校共同愿景与理念,强调责任与义务。他的学校道德领导理论不只是停留在观念层面,还提出了许多具体的实施措施。尽管这一理论是基于荚国的社会背景提出的,但它仍可以促使我们重新审视曾认为是不可动摇的学校领导观念和或许正在孜孜以求的学校领导实践,而转向思考学校领导的道德维度,形成学校领导和“以德治校”的新视界。     

The multilevel impact of transformational leadership on teacher commitment: Cognitive and motivational pathways

A growing body of research indicates that transformational leadership affects teachers’ commitment to their school. The present study aims to investigate the processes explaining this effect at the organisational level. Using a sample of 660 teachers within 50 primary French‐speaking Belgian schools, the authors test a model hypothesising that the impact of the school principal's transformational leadership (as an organisational‐level construct) on teacher commitment to school is mediated by school culture strength (cognitive pathway) and teacher collective efficacy beliefs (motivational pathway). Results of multilevel analyses largely support the theoretical model, but show that schools have a limited impact on teacher commitment.     

EXAMINING CONGRUENCE WITHIN SCHOOL–FAMILY PARTNERSHIPS: DEFINITION,IMPORTANCE, AND CURRENT MEASUREMENT APPROACHES

The purpose of this article is to explore the construct of congruence, particularly with regard to school–family collaboration and partnerships. An in‐depth review of the empirical and theoretical literature supporting a shift in focus from encouraging family involvement to creating effective school–family partnerships is presented, followed by an investigation into the construct of congruence and the methodological challenges it presents. The authors define congruence, discuss its role in creating and maintaining effective school–family partnerships, and critically review common approaches to measuring congruence and similar constructs. The implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Inclusion,exclusion and marginalisation

This article considers issues relating to the marginalisation and inclusion of pupils in a secondary school. It takes the perspective of a teacher researcher examining her everyday teaching in such a school. It has a particular focus on some black boys learning French. The article critically examines the social norms that (a) define the relations between teachers and pupils within classroom situations, (b) guide the researcher's relationship to the researched. It draws on recent psycho-analytical theory in providing an account of how children in school construct their own identity with particular reference to ethnicity and gender