Students' perception of school moral atmosphere: From moral culture to social competence. A generalizability study

Abstract

The School Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire (SMAQ) was constructed to measure differences in students' perception of school moral atmosphere between schools. The instrument is based upon the constructs defined by the Just Community Approach that focused on students' shared perspective and portrayed ideal types of school moral culture. This study presents reliability estimates of the SMAQ based on a generalizability study. A total of 1280 students from 32 normal secondary schools participated in the study. The design of the study includes the factors: type of school varying in educational level; school; grade level; class; and student. Variance components and reliabilities are estimated for two models. In Model 1 grade level is a fixed effect, in Model 2 grade level is a random effect. The results indicate that moral atmosphere in school can be measured reliably, although in Model 2 a considerable number of observations may be needed. Because score levels for some subscales depend on the school type, reliabilities are higher for the entire population than for populations consisting of one particular school type. It is concluded that students' perception of moral atmosphere in normal secondary schools have a strong individual flavour. Perceived moral atmosphere should # 2004 Psychology Press Ltd

Moral cognitive processes explaining antisocial behavior in young adolescents

“…Overall, self-serving cognitive distortions are more likely to precede perception of community, since these relationships were stronger and applied to all groups (in both the self-report and teacher-report model). When perception of community is seen as an instance of the social competence (Beem et al, 2004), these findings are in line with the cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger et al, 2007).…”

“…It should be noted that, like moral judgment, perception of the moral atmosphere can be studied as an individual characteristic (Beem, Brugman, Høst, & Tavecchio, 2004). Beem and colleagues (2004) concluded that students' perception of school moral atmosphere as measured by a questionnaire should not be regarded primarily as a shared perspective among students within a school like a moral school culture, but rather as an instance of the social competence of the individual student.…”

An extention of the school moral atmosphere construct, and its association with aggressive behaviours in secondary school

“…Even if the questionnaire has proved to be a good instrument for measuring moral atmosphere in different countries such as Netherlands (Høst et al, 1998;Beem, Brugman, Høst, & Tavecchio, 2004), and Russia , the Italian validation of the questionnaire shows that the concept of "moral atmosphere at school" needs some adjustments.…”