Student Perceptions of School Climate over Time: Two Secondary Schools

This paper reports the results of a two-year study of student perceptions of school climate. The students concerned were from two non-metropolitan government secondary schools in Years 7 to 12 in New South Wales. Two scales, originally developed in the United Kingdom by Finlayson, Banks and Loughran in 1971 and later modified by Lane, Crane and Thomas in 1982, were used to measure student perceptions. These scales were Teacher Concern for Students and Student Alienation. Student data over the two years, 1982 and 1983, were matched so that only those students present on each occasion were included in a repeated measures analysis. The two school climate scales were used as dependent variables, while the independent variables were sex and year level. There was a statistically significant interactive effect between year level, sex and testing occasion on both scales but the pattern of significant simple effects differed across the two schools. The simple effects interactive patterns are examined in detail and reasons for their occurrence are proposed.