The Effects of School Climate on the Citizenship Competencies of Young Colombian Students

• In Event: 52.038 - Citizenship Education: A Comparative Analysis of Secondary School Students' Achievement in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico

Abstract

Objectives
This study aims to identify the effect that different types of school climate have on students’ citizenship competencies. Specifically, I ask the following question: Do students in authoritative environments have lower supportive attitudes toward violence and higher civic engagement than students in authoritarian, permissive and negligent environments?

Theoretical Framework
In Colombia, the Ministry of Education has defined Citizenship Competencies (CC) as “the articulated combination of the basic knowledge and the cognitive, communicative, emotional and integrative attitudes and actions that citizens need in order to live and act constructively in a democratic society” (MEN, 2004).The national standards organize CC according to three areas of performance: 1) Peaceful coexistence; 2) Participation and democratic responsibility; 3) Plurality, identity and respect for differences.
There is mounting evidence that school climate has a powerful influence on students’ social and academic outcomes (Cohen et al, 2009; Kirby, 2001; Roeser & Eccles, 1998). Different dimensions of the school environment (safety, order, care and student empowerment) combine with each other to give emergence to distinct types of climates: authoritative, authoritarian and negligent and permissive, which have distinct effects on students’ academic performance and risk taking behaviors (Hughes, 2004; Diazgranados & Selman, 2014)

Methods
Multilevel models were used for analysis of data. Outcomes of interest are three continuous variables that reflect students´ attitudes toward three dimensions of citizenship performance: 1) Violence, and 2) Political participation, and 3) Respect for diversity. Key predictors are four school-level variables that reflect dimensions of a school climate: 1): Safety, 2) Care, 3) Order, and 4) Opportunities for Participation, as well as interaction between these predictors. Covariates include school-level variables such as school IDs, dummies to specify whether the school is urban or rural, and public or private. Individual level covariates include gender and age. Regional level covariates include municipality IDs. Prototypical models are used to estimate the effect of different types of school climates, combining different school climate dimensions.

Data sources
The study uses data from a nationally representative sample of 136,758 ninth grade students in 3,189 private and public schools in Colombia, who in the year 2012 took the National Saber Test on Citizenship Competencies.

Results
Preliminary analysis suggest that students in authoritative climates (high care, high order, high student empowerment) have the highest attitudes toward civic engagement, and students in negligent climates (low care, low order, low student empowerment) the lowest attitudes toward civic engagement. Surprisingly, in regards to attitudes toward violence we find that students in permissive climates (not authoritative) have the lowest supportive attitudes toward violence and students in authoritarian climates (not negligent) have the highest supportive attitudes toward violence.

Scientific significance
This research shows how different dimensions of school climate affect different areas of citizenship performance in different ways. This research also tests the use of a theoretical school climate framework that emerged from small qualitative studies in the United States (Hughes, 2004; Diazgranados & Selman, 2014) and explores how can these results be generalized to different outcomes (citizenship competencies), and 2) different populations in the developing world, with large and nationally representative samples.

Author

• Silvia Diazgranados, Harvard University