Perception of school climate, academic performance and risk behaviors in adolescence

Journal title RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA
Author/s Carolina Lunetti, Laura Di Giunta, Irene Fiasconaro, Reout Arbel, Emanuele Basili, Eriona Thartori, Giulia Gliozzo, Concetta Pastorelli, Jennifer E. Lansford
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/1
Language English Pages 15 P. 1-15 File size 0 KB
DOI 10.3280/rip2022oa13391
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

View article Download Open Access article

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Previous studies support the relevance of students’ perception of positive and negative school climate to learning processes and adolescents’ adjustment. School climate is affected by both the interactions that are established within the classroom, and by the teachers’ behaviors. This study has the overall objective of investigating the relationship between the perception of positive and negative school climate and students’ (mal)adjustment during adolescence. Participants were 105 Italian adolescents (52.5% boys, mean age = 15.56,SD = .77) who responded for 15 consecutive days (ecological momentary assessment) to questions related to their perception of positive and negative school climate (Time 1). After one year (Time 2), students’ academic performance reported by mothers and fathers and adolescents’ self-reported propensity to engage in risk behaviors were examined. Four hierarchical regression models were implemented considering the mean and the instability levels (RMSSD) of the perception of positive and negative school climate as independent variables and, respectively, academic performance and risk behaviors as dependent variables. Results suggest that a higher perception of positive school climate and its instability predict higher academic performance one year later, while a higher perception of negative school climate and its instability predict higher risk behaviors. This study provides an innovative perspective to reflect on the relationship between students’ perceptions of school climate and adolescents’ (mal)adjustment.

Keywords: ; school climate; academic performance; risk behaviors; adolescence

  1. Achenbach, T. M. (1991). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/4-18 and 1991 profile. University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.
  2. Andersson, B. E., & Strander, K. (2004). Perceptions of school and future adjustment to life: A longitudinal study between the ages of 18 and 25. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 48(5), 459-476. DOI: 10.1080/003138042000272122
  3. Astor, R. A., Benbenishty, R., Zeira, A., & Vinokur, A. (2002). School climate, observed risky behaviors, and victimization as predictors of high school students’ fear and judgments of school violence as a problem. Health Education & Behavior, 29(6), 716-736. DOI: 10.1177/109019802237940
  4. Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Kim, D. I., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1995). Schools as communities, poverty levels of student populations, and students’ attitudes, motives, and performance: A multilevel analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 627-658. DOI: 10.3102/00028312032003627
  5. Berkowitz, R., Moore, H., Astor, R. A., & Benbenishty, R. (2017). A research synthesis of the associations between socioeconomic background, inequality, school climate, and academic achievement. Review of Educational Research, 87(2), 425-469. DOI: 10.3102/0034654316669821
  6. Blum, R. W. (2005). A case for school connectedness. Educational Leadership, 62(7), 16-19.
  7. Boncori, G. (2018). Rendimento scolastico-accademico: Valutazione e promozione. Edizioni Nuova Cultura.
  8. Catalano, M. G., Perucchini, P., & Vecchio, G. M. (2014). The quality of teachers’ educational practices: Internal validity and applications of a new selfevaluation questionnaire. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 141, 459-464. DOI: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.080
  9. Cauffman, E., Shulman, E. P., Steinberg, L., Claus, E., Banich, M. T., Graham, S., & Woolard, J. (2010). Age differences in affective decision making as indexed by performance on the Iowa Gambling Task. Developmental Psychology, 46(1), 193-207. DOI: 10.1037/a0016128
  10. Collie, R. J., Shapka, J. D., & Perry, N. E. (2011). Predicting teacher commitment: The impact of school climate and social-emotional learning. Psychology in the Schools, 48(10), 1034-1048. DOI: 10.1002/pits.20611
  11. Corville-Smith, J., Ryan, B. A., Adams, G. R., & Dalicandro, T. (1998). Distinguishing absentee students from regular attenders: The combined influence of personal, family, and school factors. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 27(5), 629-640.
  12. Crosnoe, R., Johnson, M. K., & Elder Jr, G. H. (2004). Intergenerational bonding in school: The behavioral and contextual correlates of student-teacher relationships. Sociology of Education, 77(1), 60-81. DOI: 10.1177/003804070407700103
  13. Curran, P. J., West, S. G., & Finch, J. F. (1996). The robustness of test statistics to nonnormality and specification error in confirmatory factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 1(1), 16-29.
  14. Di Vita, A. (2017). Orientare nella scuola alla scelta formativo-professionale post-diploma con la metodologia.
  15. Ebner-Priemer, U. W., & Trull, T. J. (2012). Investigating temporal instability in psychological variables: Understanding the real world as time dependent. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 423-439). The Guilford Press.
  16. Gumora, G., & Arsenio, W. F. (2002). Emotionality, emotion regulation, and school performance in middle school children. Journal of School Psychology, 40(5), 395-413. DOI: 10.1016/S0022-4405(02)00108-5
  17. Hendron, M., & Kearney, C. A. (2016). School climate and student absenteeism and internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. Children & Schools, 38(2), 109-116. DOI: 10.1093/cs/cdw009
  18. Henry, K. L., & Huizinga, D. H. (2007). School-related risk and protective factors associated with truancy among urban youth placed at risk. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 28(6), 505-519. DOI: 10.1007/s10935-007-0115-7
  19. Istituto Italiano di Statistica [Italian Institute of Statistics] ISTAT (2007) Annuario statistico italiano [Italian yearbook of statistics]. Rome: ISTAT.
  20. Jensen, M., George, M. J., Russell, M. R., & Odgers, C. L. (2019). Young adolescents’ digital technology use and mental health symptoms: Little evidence of longitudinal or daily linkages. Clinical Psychological Science, 7(6), 1416-1433.
  21. Kwong, D., & Davis, J. R. (2015). School climate for academic success: A multilevel analysis of school climate and student outcomes. Journal of Research in Education, 25(2), 68-81.
  22. Loukas, A. (2007). What is school climate. Leadership Compass, 5(1), 1-3.
  23. Moos, R. H., & Moos, B. S. (1978). Classroom social climate and student absences and grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 70(2), 263-269. DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.70.2.263
  24. Moos, R. H., & Trickett, E. J. (1987). Classroom environment scale: Manual. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
  25. O’Malley, M., Voight, A., Renshaw, T. L., & Eklund, K. (2015). School climate, family structure, and academic achievement: A study of moderation effects. School Psychology Quarterly, 30(1), 14-2157. DOI: 10.1037/spq0000076
  26. Reynolds, K. J., Lee, E., Turner, I., Bromhead, D., & Subasic, E. (2017). How does school climate impact academic achievement? An examination of social identity processes. School Psychology International, 38(1), 78-97. DOI: 10.1177/0143034316682295
  27. Stewart, E. B. (2008). School structural characteristics, student effort, peer associations, and parental involvement: The influence of school-and individuallevel factors on academic achievement. Education and Urban Society, 40(2), 179-204. DOI: 10.1177/0013124507304167
  28. Vieno, A., Perkins, D. D., Smith, T. M., & Santinello, M. (2005). Democratic school climate and sense of community in school: A multilevel analysis. American Journal of Community Psychology, 36(3-4), 327-341. DOI: 10.1007/s10464-005-8629-8
  29. Wen, W., He, Y., Rajbhandari, S., Zhang, M., Wang, W., Liu, F., & Li, H. (2017). Learning intrinsic sparse structures within long short-term memory. Arrive preprint arXiv:1709.05027.

  • Homework, Households, and Hurdles: The Unexpected Drivers of Student Graduation Perceptions Daniel Alhassan, Zahra Fatah, Priscilla Mansah Codjoe, Caroline Bena Kuno, Dorcas Ofori-Boateng, in Education Sciences /2025 pp.670
    DOI: 10.3390/educsci15060670
  • How to select candidates for an undergraduate degree in psychology? Combining high-school GPA and admission test score Angela Sorgente, Giada Pietrabissa, Alessandro Antonietti, Andrea Bonanomi, Gianluca Castelnuovo, Margherita Lanz, Semira Tagliabue, Daniela Traficante, in Asia Pacific Education Review /2025 pp.459
    DOI: 10.1007/s12564-024-09978-x
  • Longitudinal Measurement Invariance of the Dual School Climate and School Identification Scale (SCASIM-St15) in Chilean Adolescents José Luis Gálvez-Nieto, Ítalo Trizano-Hermosilla, Karina Polanco-Levicán, Ignacio Norambuena-Paredes, Maura Klenner-Loebel, Sandra Riquelme-Sandoval, in Behavioral Sciences /2025 pp.750
    DOI: 10.3390/bs15060750

Carolina Lunetti, Laura Di Giunta, Irene Fiasconaro, Reout Arbel, Emanuele Basili, Eriona Thartori, Giulia Gliozzo, Concetta Pastorelli, Jennifer E. Lansford, Perception of school climate, academic performance and risk behaviors in adolescence in "RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA" 1/2022, pp 1-15, DOI: 10.3280/rip2022oa13391