Teachers’ Instructional Beliefs and the Classroom Climate: Connections and Conundrums

Abstract

Teachers form beliefs based on numerous factors, for example, teaching experience, underlying teaching philosophy, personal values, stereotyping, and personal background, all of which ultimately affect how teachers design instruction and what students will learn (e.g., Pajares, 1992). The classroom climate can be understood as a combination of the interrelated instructional and socioemotional climates shaped by teachers and created with students in classrooms. The instructional climate is formed through teachers’ pedagogical decisions. The socioemotional climate of a classroom results from the ways in which teachers interact with students and the relationships they foster both with the teacher and among the students. Together the instructional and socioemotional structures of the classroom serve to create the classroom climate. Hence, the classroom climate can be defi ned as a combination of the instructional and socioemotional environments in which students live their classroom life (Babad, 2009).