Is School Climate Imperative for Social-Emotional Learning ? Myths & Facts
Just like any other day, I was penning my thoughts in the journal before sleep. While I tried to reflect on how my day went by, I understood how I experienced feelings of malaise with dreary, rainy and cold weather on that day. And most of us call it winter blues. My thoughts went a little ahead and started thinking on how differences in weather affect our moods — we all have also experienced that sunny weather uplifts our mood as it brings in happiness, whereas most of us tend to feel low on rainy days. Isn’t it? And isn’t it also interesting that we look forward to the weather specific to our moods?
Being a teacher, I further thought, if we adults can get so easily influenced by change in weather, what about children who spend most of their waking time in school ? Wouldn’t children at their tender age get easily influenced by the surroundings around them ? Would that have an impact on their own self, their relationships and learning process? Does the school climate really matter in a child’s development ? If yes, to what extent?
Having been bombarded by these questions about the school climate , I set out to find some resources to better understand what it is. I was astonished to know that the school climate is much beyond what I had thought (mostly the physical aspects of school!!) and its immense impact on it’s stakeholders . Now, here is what I understood about school climate.
Generally, when we think of the word environment — whether at work, home or at school, we tend to envision the physical features — the facilities, available resources and the neighborhood. Specific to school, these things do matter, but just these do not encompass all of the school climate. The concept of school climate has been informed by organizational and school effectiveness research. Research has also identified school climate as one of the leading factors of students’ emotional and behavioral outcomes.
To make this more simple, let’s try this — Don’t we all remember moments from our childhood when we felt specifically safe or unsafe in school, when we felt connected to a caring adult or felt lonely, when we engaged in meaningful learning, felt the subject was easy and eventually started liking it. These are a few memories from school that we all tend to distinctly recall: good and/or bad. And these are the experiences that shape our learning and are as well related to the quality of the school climate. Let us now give a try to understand what comprises school climate and its significance too.
The following passages discuss in detail about the school SEL climate:
School SEL climate includes organizational features that shape students’ experiences by creating a safe and equitable learning environment for all its personnel. This helps in developing a sense of belonging and enables everyone to perform at their best by setting rules and norms. This in turn makes individuals feel safe, appreciate diversity and deal with adverse situations. The focus is also on enabling active participation of students and teachers to emotionally engage in learning processes helping to sustain students’ interest towards learning. Emotional engagement of teachers in the process helps students to understand, respect and accept others’ views and work in cooperation . In a school with an active school climate, stakeholders share authentic and trustworthy relationships for effective functioning of individuals and the school.
With all these forming the components of school climate, let us have a look at the benefits it offers from the perspective of field research. School climate and social and emotional learning (SEL) are often considered separately by researchers and practitioners, but both are crucial to build healthy schools. They influence and benefit each other. A positive school climate creates the conditions for SEL; the social and emotional competence of each member of the school community, both individually and collectively, affect the school climate.
Positive school climate and effective SEL approaches form essential components of safe, supportive, and academically productive schools. School climate is the collective phenomenon that reflects and creates conditions for the development of social, emotional, and academic competence in both adults and students. This process of development of competencies helps develop harmony, reduce differences and bring in positive changes in school practices. e.g. when we see fewer bullying incidents in the school, students are less fearful, use effective ways of conflict resolution and have more cooperative, inclusive and productive interactions. This also reduces disruptions in learning and leads to positive outcomes.
Schools being self-contained environments are safer spaces for children and their families. These environments also address the social and emotional aspects thereby supporting student health and academic performance. This also fosters a sense of belonging among school personnel and is shown to reduce depression, increase self-efficacy and provide opportunities to build self-confidence and relationship skills. An effective school climate influences numerous stakeholders towards school’s success. In students , it also helps to promote positive mental health outcomes, self-esteem and also brings changes in student behavior like the reduced rates of bullying, aggression and student delinquency. This also mitigates the negative effects of self-criticism and socio-economic status on academic performance.
A responsive school climate aims at engaging multiple members by creating opportunities for diverse perspectives and respects them, and this also has a high influence on teacher retention by reducing burnout and attrition. In such a positive school climate, teachers are seen to have a purpose, a say over working conditions and have enhanced teaching professionalism.
And, what is our role in developing an effective school climate ?
An effective school climate cannot be created in a day and there seems to be no magic formula for it . Working constantly on school climate is an crucial part of a successful school. It essentially needs intrinsically motivated and engaged teachers whose aim would be to create a safe and supportive climate to ensure student development. ‘Trust’ among stakeholders is imperative to a more positive climate. This includes providing opportunities for all school personnel to have a say in the process and the school leader can focus on facilitating trust between stakeholders.
The first step would be assessing the current school climate to know the starting point to know where to go followed by creating a shared vision for the stakeholders. Secondly, having a shared vision on the kind of school climate needs to be created, which increases the plausibility that the vision will be carried out de facto. For the shared vision to be achieved effectively, it has to emerge from personal visions of stakeholders, or else it is difficult to stay committed to the shared vision, suggests Peter Senge from MIT. This can then be followed by working together towards the shared vision ensuring everyone included is having fun.
After having read about school climate , the teacher in me was more inspired knowing the benefits that a positive school SEL climate could offer to everyone. I did note down initial action plans I could think of to create a conducive school climate for my students. A positive school SEL climate is sure to bring back the joy and fun into the teaching-learning process. And I would definitely be a part of it. Also, I couldn’t wait for the next morning to share about school SEL climate with my colleagues at school because “Knowledge is power as long as it is shared” as quoted by Baris Gencel.
Now that you also have a fair understanding of school SEL climate, take a moment to paint a picture of the same — the school SEL climate. Is it the teachers who work in collaboration towards the shared vision? Or is it the students who feel safe in school? Or is it the parents who extend their cooperation and share ideas in supporting the school to realize its vision . Take a moment and write down 3 pointers that represent a positive school SEL climate.
If you are a teacher wondering about ways to assess school climate, or a parent wanting to understand more on this , or a school leader who needs to know your role in setting up a positive SEL school climate or you have more queries about the school climate, we have SEL resources that are proven to improve SEL levels of stakeholders of the school and school climate as well.
For more information do visit us : http://www.learning-curve-foundation.org/
Asha B S Aradhya
Head, Research
asha@learning-curve.co.in
References
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