School Climate: Parents’, Students’ And Teachers’ Perceptions

Because of the importance of individual perceptions, schools often assess how students or teachers or parents feel about their school, and school climate has often been associated with improved school achievement, but rarely they take into account all these “actors” at the same time. The main aim of this work is to compare the results obtained in a population study on school climate that involves students, parents, teachers and non-teaching staff. In this paper, we will present the results of parents’, students’, teachers’ and no-teacher personnel's perception. We have administered 13,500 structured questionnaires addressed to students, parents, teachers, educational assistance personnel, involved in the four orders of schools (Pre-school, Elementary, Middle, High) of the province of Bolzano. Parental permission was obtained for young people. The present study has been conducted in the province of Bolzano, northern Italy, between January and April 2012. A School Climate Perception Questionnaire (SCPQ), that can be completed in 10 minutes, has been developed to assess environments and climate of all Italian language schools. In order to determine the interrelationships among the questionnaire items, a Principal-Axis Factor Analysis was performed. The final scale was used for Confirmatory Factor Analysis that was done to assess its construct validity. We will present the results regarding the school climate perceptions of teachers, parents and students and their comparison.