The School Climate Challenge

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The School Climate is an important yet often overlooked aspect in the teaching-

learning process. It encompasses the norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships

among students and teachers, and other factors that constitute the school life experience

of students. It exists as a backdrop of motivations or perhaps, complications, in the

development of the students, depending on how an institution and its school personnel

give importance to it.

Through a number of positive feedbacks regarding the effects of School Climate

on the learners’ development, I couldn’t agree more on the notion that it should then be

a must that school climate be given great emphasis through empowering the knowledge

and understanding of the teaching staff and school personnel in seminars and workshops,

specially the neophyte teachers, regarding School Climate challenge, since the school

personnel are also the school climate leaders.

As identified by education policy-makers, there are two overlapping dimensions

that shape the school-climate-related practices of an educational institution, namely,

Assessment and School Improvement Guidelines. However, both dimension has its own

shortcomings when it comes to their efficiency in the roles they play. Primarily, School

climate is not regularly evaluated with a measure that is scientifically developed and

comprehensively assessed all of the dimensions that shape experience in schools.

Second, school climate improvement efforts exerted by administrators aren’t always

THE SCHOOL CLIMATE CHANGE LM ANDO

aligned with research findings. These dimensions is a requirement in shaping the school

climate of a classroom or an institution, setbacks in these tools and guidelines will render

the administration efforts in attaining a positive school climate less efficient, if not totally

futile.

School Climate doesn’t only improve the child’s learning experience in the four

corners of the classroom. It also promote the holistic development of the child just as

positive climate for citizenship education helps students to be politically and socially

responsible individuals.

In the 21st century teaching-learning process, it is therefore very important for

teachers and administrators alike to ensure the existence of a positive school climate and

construct a more reliable measure of it so that the findings thereof could be useful in

further learning and holistic development of the students.

THE SCHOOL CLIMATE CHANGE LM ANDO