Abstract
This research investigated some determinants of classroom environment in Australian Catholic high schools. The Catholic School Classroom Environment Questionnaire (CSCEQ) was used to assess seven dimensions of the classroom pyschosocial environment: student affiliation, interactions, cooperation, task orientation, order and organization, individualization, and teacher control. The sample consisted of 1,719 students from 80 classes in 20 Catholic coeducational and single-sex schools. Validation data attested to the sound structural properties of the CSCEQ. Because the data were nested (i.e., students within classes within schools), multilevel analyses were used to investigate the influence of student gender, grade, subject, and school type on students' perceptions of the classroom environment. Statistically significant associations between some of these grouping variables and some of the CSCEQ scales were evident, with gender and grade the main explanatory variables. Variance in order and organization was not explained by any of the four hypothesized grouping variables.
Highlights
The present paper reports research that investigated some determinants of classroom environment in Australian Catholic high schools
The present study focuses on the determinants of classroom environments in Catholic high schools, a line of research that has not been as prolific in recent years as the study of associations between classroom environment and outcomes
Indices ranged from 0.54 for individualization to 0.90 for interactions. These values compare favorably with those reported in previous learning environment research
Summary
The aims of this research were to:. use multilevel analysis to investigate the influence of student gender, grade, subject, and school type on students’ perceptions of the classroom environment as assessed by scales of the CSCEQ. Use multilevel analysis to investigate the influence of student gender, grade, subject, and school type on students’ perceptions of the classroom environment as assessed by scales of the CSCEQ. The student affiliation assesses the extent to which students know, help, and are friendly toward one another This is an important characteristic of authentic Catholic school environments. This study of classroom environment involved 1,719 students in 80 classes in 20 Catholic schools. To investigate which grouping variables (viz., student gender, grade, subject, and school type) significantly explained variance in CSCEQ scale scores, multilevel analyses using MLwiN (Rasbash, Steele, Browne, & Prosser, 2005) with the student as the first-level variable, class as the secondlevel variable, and school as the third-level variable were performed. The proportion of variance explained and effect sizes for all significant explanatory variables are reported
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