The Authoritative School Climate Survey was designed to provide schools with a brief assessment of 2 key characteristics of school climate--disciplinary structure and student support--that are hypothesized to influence 2 important school climate outcomes--student engagement and prevalence of teasing and bullying in school. The factor structure of these 4 constructs was examined with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in a statewide sample of 39,364 students (Grades 7 and 8) attending 423 schools. Notably, the analyses used a multilevel structural approach to model the nesting of students in schools for purposes of evaluating factor structure, demonstrating convergent and concurrent validity and gauging the structural invariance of concurrent validity coefficients across gender. These findings provide schools with a core group of school climate measures guided by authoritative discipline theory.
The teacher version of the ASCS can be used to assess 2 key domains of school climate and associated measures of student engagement and aggression toward peers and teachers.
This study examined the relations between the schoolwide prevalence of teasing and bullying (PTB) and schoolwide academic performance in a sample of 271 Virginia middle schools. In addition, the study examined the mediating effects of student engagement. A three-step sequence of path models investigated associations between schoolwide PTB and statemandated Standards of Learning test pass rates, with effects examined both directly and indirectly through student engagement while controlling for important school-level characteristics. Separate models were examined for two 7th-grade and four 8th-grade tests. Results indicated that higher levels of both teacher and student perceptions of schoolwide teasing and bullying were significantly associated with lower achievement pass rates and student engagement. The relationship between perceptions of schoolwide teasing and bullying and achievement was partially mediated by student engagement. These findings bring new support for the need for schoolwide interventions to reduce teasing and bullying among middle school students.
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