Social Climate in the Environment of Primary Schools

Abstract

The topic of this research survey is exploring the social climate in the environment of the elementary primary schools and alternative schools. School climate has an impact on social behaviour of pupil, their motivation to learn and learning outcomes. We can expect in favourable climate an increase of school effectiveness and mainly therefore the researches of school climate have been recently in the last period of accentuated category. At alternative schools a priori presumes positive atmoshere based on not only interrelations among children and teachers but also it is built on activating educational environment and mutual cooperation. Are these above mentioned characters really the only exclusive concern of alternative schools? Or do they become a common part of standard schools? In this case we present results of pilot study where we try to find differences between perception of climate in classrooms of standard primary school and in classrooms of alternative schools. This is a quantitative comparable survey where a revised version of standardized questionnaire MCI (My Class Inventory, by B. J. Fraser, D. L. Fisher) was used and adapted for Czech environment (by J. Mareš, J. Lašek). In the second part of the research we were interested in whether the educational environment contributes to the perception of positive climate – thinking in relation with unconventional methods and forms of teaching if there are any differences in the area of using unconventional methods and forms of work among standard schools and alternative schools.