School climate in elementary and secondary schools: views of Cypriot principals and teachers

Abstract

Aims to examine and present the beliefs of elementary and secondary school principals and teachers concerning their school’s climate. Investigates four parameters related to school climate, namely: communication, collaboration, organizational structure, and students. Both elementary and secondary principals and teachers indicated that the climate in their particular schools is satisfactory with an overall mean of 2.33 on a three‐point Likert‐type scale. The lowest mean was given to the parameter organizational structure (2.26), the second to the parameter students (2.29) and the third to the parameter collaboration (2.31). Therefore, one could conclude that the above areas are in most need of improvement. Based on gender, one general comment would be that men seemed to feel worse about their particular school’s climate than women. Further, more experienced teachers had slightly different views when compared with less experienced teachers in two parameters of the questionnaire (organizational structure and students).