School Climate and Student Outcomes

School climate has been a subject of interest to educators and researchers for over a century. As early as 1908, Perry was the first to explore the impact of school climate on student learning (Cohen & Geier, 2010). Decades later, Dewey examined the social dimensions and internal environments of schools. During the 1960s, Halpin and Croft were the first to measure school climate as a means of determining school effectiveness (Cohen & Geier, 2010). Prior to Halpin and Croft, most school climate research was qualitative but over the past fifty years many researchers have employed quantitative methods to measure school climate. The foundations of school climate research can be traced to various theoretical disciplines such as social psychology, education psychology, organizational and management theory (Anderson, 1982). Beginning in the 1980s, school climate research expanded from a primary focus on school effectiveness to other measurable aspects of student outcomes including; socio-emotional development, student self-efficacy, and student behavior (Cohen, 2009). Since the turn of the 21 century, researchers, practitioners, community activists, and policy makers have linked the influence of school climate on student mental health and risky student behaviors (Cohen, 2009; Frey, Ruchkin, Martin, Schwab-Stone, 2009; Kasen, Cohen, Chen, Johnson & Crawford, 2009 ).