r

1
r P School Moral Climate A New Method
to Assess Socio-Cultural Perceptions and Its
Relation to Bullying Anne Howard
Steven Landau Department of
Psychology Illinois State University
ABSTRACT Purpose Given widespread concern
associated with school-based bullying,
researchers are looking beyond the dyadic
perspective (i.e., focusing on bullies and
victims only) and are now considering a broader
social ecology. School moral climate has emerged
as an important factor in the occurrence of
bullying and how bystanders perceive bullies and
their victims. Method The current study presents
a new method for measuring school climate and
examined the relationships between climate
perceptions, affective and cognitive individual
differences, and bullying outcomes. Results Boys
who hold school climate perceptions more negative
than their classmates endorse less prosocial
attributes, stronger attitudes about the
acceptability of aggressive retaliation, and hold
less favorable views of a victim of bullying.
Conclusion School climate may have implications
for bullying and other student outcomes, and
should be considered as a focus of prevention
efforts.

• METHOD
• Participants
• Participants included 377 6th 8th grade
  students from two middle schools. Fifty-three
  percent were male (Mean age 12.4). Although the
  focus of the study was on males, female
  participants were recruited to obtain a more
  complete understanding of cohort-wide school
  moral climate. Social climate data represented 17
  cohorts, and each cohort was comprised of three
  or four classrooms within a grade.
• Procedure
• Each participant completed the 55-item School
  Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire (SMAQ Høst et
  al., 1998) that is intended to measure students
  perception of school moral climate. This scale
  has demonstrated utility in predicting
  involvement with bullying and related behaviors
  (Brugman et al., 2003).
• The SMAQ is a multiple-choice instrument that
  captures students perceptions about several
  components of the school climate including
• School Connectedness (e.g., As a student you
  have a sort of contract with the school, so I
  think you shouldnt skip school.)
• School Pride (e.g., I am proud of being a
  student at this school when a school team
  wins an important game.)
• Relationships with Peers (e.g., At this school
  you can trust other students.)
• Shared Sense of Community (e.g., Most students
  feel this school is a community, where
  students and teachers care about each other.)
• Rules and Discipline (e.g., You have to be
  careful what you do, otherwise the teachers are
  on your back.)
• Relationships with Teachers (e.g., Students
  trust their teachers.)

• Similarly, boys whose school climate perceptions
  were discrepant from their classmates in a
  negative way endorsed greater tolerance for
  aggression compared to students who held positive
  biases about the school, t(168) 3.86, p lt .01.
  In other words, boys who described their schools
  in more unpleasant terms than peers also
  considered aggression a more acceptable solution
  for social problems.
• Finally, after viewing an apparent bullying
  episode on-line, likeability of the putative
  victim was determined by boys school climate
  discrepancy from their cohort. When asked a
  series of social preference questions (e.g., How
  much do you like the victim? How popular do you
  think he is?), results indicated that boys who
  hold a negative view of school climate relative
  to classmates considered the victim significantly
  less favorably than boys who held a positive view
  of their school, t(142) -3.17, p lt .01.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of boys school
climate discrepancy views and individual
differences psychosocial variables.

• INTRODUCTION
• School-based bullying is a pervasive problem
  with severe and lasting consequences. A number of
  negative consequences accrue among the targets of
  bullying, including psychological distress, low
  self-esteem, increased social anxiety, poor peer
  relations, and increased psychopathology.

• Recent research (e.g., Gini, 2005) has shifted
  from a focus on the traditional dyadic
  perspective (i.e., a focus on the bully and
  victim) to a focus on bullying as a group
  process.
• There are numerous variables to consider when
  attempting to understand group processes involved
  with bullying. One important variable, school
  moral climate, has recently emerged as a strong
  predictor of school-based behavior problems. The
  intent of this investigation was to examine
  school moral climate in the context of bullying.
• School climate is a broad construct that
  generally refers to the physical conditions,
  interpersonal/social variables, and cultural
  norms of the school.
• A few notable studies have examined the
  relationship between school climate and a range
  of student academic, behavioral, and emotional
  outcomes. Brugman et al. (2003) investigated the
  contributions of moral atmosphere to several
  school-based transgressive behaviors, including
  bullying. Results indicated that a students
  decision to violate rules or help a fellow
  classmate was more likely determined by social
  norms than the childs moral knowledge and social
  skills.
• However, these studies considered school moral
  climate as an individual difference, and this
  view may misrepresent its validity as a
  socio-cultural construct.
• The current study presents a new method of
  conceptualizing and deriving moral climate in
  schools. Specifically, school moral climate was
  conceptualized in the context of the childs
  potential illusory bias. School climate scores
  were obtained by aggregating individual scores
  cohort-wide (i.e., clusters of three or four
  classrooms) and subtracting the average from each
  individual score, yielding a discrepancy score.
• Results are presented on the relation between
  cohort-wide perceptions of school moral climate,
  bullying rates, prosocial attributes, tolerance
  for aggression, and the how participants
  responded to a live bullying event.

• CONCLUSIONS
• School climate seems to be viewed differently by
  children who have been victimized by bullies. It
  is alarming that students who experience bullying
  feel less connected to their school and adopt
  beliefs about the acceptability of aggressive
  retaliation. Students beliefs about the relative
  positive or negative nature of their school
  climate also seem to inform how these students
  feel about the likeability of real victims. A
  negative view of victims may contribute to
  subsequent victimization.
• Researchers and educators alike should be
  interested in demonstrating the benefits of a
  positive school climate and identifying the
  formula that successfully balances academic
  learning, social-emotional needs of children, and
  the social ecology of the school.
• This poster can be accessed under Student
  Research at http//www.psychology.ilstu.edu/sela
  ndau/