Impact of School Environment on Students

School environment refers to the set of relationships that occur among members of a school community that is determined by structural, personal, and functional factors of the educational institution, which provide distinctiveness to schools.

The Influence of the Learning Environment on Student Success

It makes sense that students would do better when they learn in positive environments. After all, most people would agree that some environments are more conducive to learning and academic performance. A student taking a test in a quiet, peaceful room will almost certainly do better than a student taking the same test in a loud, chaotic room.

Factors That Support Student Success

1) Safety and order
2) Teacher relationships and collaboration
3) Academic expectations
4) Leadership and professional development

What is School Climate?

The school climate construct is complex and multi-dimensional. It has been described as the unwritten personality and atmosphere of a school, including its norms, values, and expectations. Further, it has been described as the “quality and character of school life”. Importantly, rather than concerning administrative or physical attributes of the school (e.g., teachers' salary or schools' physical resources), school climate research hones in on the psychosocial school atmosphere, and the inter-group interactions that affect student learning and school functioning.

The Current Study

The extant literature has demonstrated that students' and members of staff's ratings of school climate have a significant impact on students' academic outcomes. Nevertheless, there are several gaps and issues in this body of work to be addressed. First, although some parallel measures have assessed both students' and staff's school climate perception little is known about whether staff school climate perception plays a significant role when student perceptions and other covariates are taken into account in a single statistical model.