To quote from or to cite this article, please see: Greenwalt, K.A. (2015). Climate: School and classroom. In W.G. Scarlett (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Classroom Management (pp. 155-157). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Reference.

School and Classroom Climate Kyle A. Greenwalt

Climate is a meteorological concept. There are polar, temperate and tropical climates,

among others. No climate is, in itself, perfect. Nor is climate ever static. Some days are rainy,

while others are sunny and warm. Change is constant, yet certain patterns emerge--ones that have

a tremendous impact over time.

Some climates are more hospitable to certain life forms than others. The question of

climate is, therefore, tied to questions about desirable forms of life.

In order to wonder about the kinds of school and classroom climates that are desirable,

we must first decide what forms of life we wish to sustain. For the purposes of this entry, I will

assume that individuals thrive best under democratic social conditions. Democratic ways of life

provide individuals with the richest levels of individual experience, and provide societies with

the most equitable distributions of such experiences.

In what follows, I will draw upon ideas that help us understand the importance of

classroom and school climate. My approach is to ask questions rather than offer prescriptions. I

do so in order to help those invested in the education of children reflect upon the types of

climates that best sustain rich, democratic living in their local contexts. I will start at the most

local level: the classroom.

Classroom Climate

Classroom climate might best be approached through examining its various aspects. For

each of its three aspects, I will first provide a description, and then ask a series of questions that

teachers and students might find helpful for inventorying their own classroom climate.

Aesthetic and Physical Aspects

These aspects speak to the physical resources of the classroom, how they are brought

together, and what type of mood they set for the individuals in such a space. We are speaking

here of such things as books, posters, and desks--how many there are, of what types, and in what

sorts of arrangements. But we are also speaking of how light, color, sound, smell and texture are

brought together in the physical classroom space. Such things can have great impact on the types

of behaviors that occur in a classroom.

What mood is invoked upon first entering my classroom? How have I arranged the

desks, tables and other furniture? How are the walls decorated? Do I have personal artifacts

present? If so, what message do these artifacts send? Is student work on display? If so, whose

work? Are there distinct spaces in my classroom for different sorts of activities? If not, can the

classroom quickly be re-configured, so as to promote different ways of learning: small group

discussion, large group meetings, individual contemplation?

Intellectual and Emotional Aspects

These aspects speak to the way the teacher sets up a range of possible thoughts and

feelings for students. Some classrooms might require very formal behavior, and little show of

personal emotion. Other classrooms might allow less formal behavior, but yet allowing the type

of teasing that excludes some students from the social and intellectual networks being formed.

Some classrooms might be set up for the single-minded pursuit of the correct answers, while

others might allow much intellectual exploration.

What are the predominant emotions in my classroom on any particular day? Is there

evidence of boredom? Of joy and happiness? Of silliness? Of anger? Are such emotions talked

through, or acted out? Are they acknowledged, or suppressed? How good am I, and how good

are my students, at picking up on each others emotional cues? How do we deal with a person

who is having a bad day?

What are the predominant intellectual operations in my classroom on any particular

day? Do I see more lower- or higher-order thinking? Are students afraid to take intellectual

risks in my classroom? Are students comfortable getting the answer wrong in my classroom? Do

I ask students to work through different intelligences and learning styles? Do I often find myself

intellectually engaged by a thought or idea, or do I feel like I am simply repeating something that

I have said many times before?

Social and Political Aspects

These aspects speak to the norms guiding the manner in which the teacher and students

interact with one another in the pursuit of both shared and distinct goals. It speaks, in short, to

the classroom expectations for how one will participate in classroom life. Behavior can be

competitive, cooperative, or individualistic, in both its means and its aims. Students can be

grouped heterogeneously or homogenously, interacting across the relatively wide or narrow

range of their abilities, interests, goals and life histories. Or students can occupy the same

physical space, and interact very little at all. Students may be allowed to initiate much of the

intellectual and social exchanges that place in the classroom, or, by contrast, the teacher may

take sole responsibility for initiating most everything that happens in the classroom. Finally, the

classroom can open itself up to the interests and problems of the larger world, or it can put up

firm barriers, resisting such interactions with larger and more distant groups.

What sorts of social interactions predominate in my classroom? Do I need to constantly

keep students on task, or is their behavior more self- or group-regulated? Do students make and

keep friends in my classroom, or do they stick largely to the groups they have already formed? If

I have to leave the classroom for a few minutes, what happens? Can I trust my students, or do I

always need to keep my eyes on them? Do students volunteer information and news, about

themselves and the world, or do I need to pull it out of them? Does my classroom run more like a

family, a football team, or an Army platoon?

Each of these three aspects, of course, contain elements that overlap with the others. Yet

as a rough checklist, these three aspects would seem to cover what we think about when we talk

about a warm or inviting or engaging or democratic classroom climate. While no

teacher is likely to have a classroom strong on each aspect--so much of the work of teaching lies

outside the control of the teacher--such a checklist seems helpful for inviting reflection on the

types of spaces in which we as teachers, and our students, do our conjoint work.

School Climate

On the face of it, there is no reason to think that the aspects that matter for classroom

climate will be any different when we turn to consider the school. That said, researchers have

long argued that the individual school stands as the most important unit of analysis when

thinking about institutionalized educational life. While it is perhaps the case that a classroom can

be an oasis of calm in a stormy school sea, such a situation is both unlikely, and undesirable.

Researchers have not done as good a job as communities at recognizing that there is

something special about a school and its associated climate. Schools in the United States have

long been branded by others, and have increasingly sought to brand themselves. Students are

encouraged to have school spirit, built often through athletic teams, whole-school assemblies

and pep rallies, and school songs, colors and mascots. While such things are not common in

other countries outside the United States, I have never yet been to a school anywhere in the

world that did not set up rituals that helped define it. Such rituals can be helpful for building a

sense of community; yet if cast too narrowly, they can also leave a significant number of

students feeling alienated or unappreciated.

So in the above set of reflective questions, we can feel free to substitute school for

classroom, students, teachers, and other school workers for students, and we for I.

Doing so, we will start to effectively reflect on our schools climate. But because schools have an

added symbolic dimension, we need to add that to our list as well. And because I have already

spoken about what that symbolic aspect means, I will move here right to the reflective questions.

Symbolic Aspects

Who belongs to our school community? Does the list include janitors, bus drivers,

secretaries and aids? What about parents and other caregivers? When does our school come

together as a whole? How often? Do such gatherings have an intellectual purpose, an artistic

purpose, an athletic purpose, a spiritual/religious purpose, and/or a strictly social purpose?

When people hear our school mentioned, what is their likely reaction? What images come to

their mind? Are these images that we are proud of? Are these images reflective of the full range

of talents, skills and life experiences that constitute our school community?

Conclusion

In 1938, John Dewey famously wrote that perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical

fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time. As

teachers, it is incumbent upon us to remember that our work is always moral in nature, and much

of that moral teaching comes from the climates we help create.

Kyle A. Greenwalt

See also: Caring Approaches, Democratic Approaches, Democratic Practices in Classrooms and

Schools, Progressive Education, Warmth and Classroom Management

Further Reading

Angell, A.V. (1991). Democratic climates in elementary school classrooms: A review of theory

and research. Theory and Research in Social Education, 19(3), 241-266.

Dewey, J. (1997). Experience & education. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc. (Original work

published 1938)

Eisner, E. (1979). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school

programs. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

Jackson, P.W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. (Original work

published in 1968)

Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, R.T. (1986). Learning together and learning alone: Cooperative,

competitive and individualistic learning. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Newmann, F.M. (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality.

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education.

New York: Teachers College Press.