The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Environmental Chaos: Teachers' Perspectives on School Order

• In Event: 47.096 - MTCC Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: 47.096-13 - The Effect of School Climate and Culture on Teachers

Abstract

This study uses an ecological lens to better understand teachers’ perceptions of their work environments, focusing on the aspect of environmental chaos. Although well studied in other environments and shown to have strong effects on child development, environmental chaos has yet to be explored in the K-12 educational setting. We spoke with teachers to get their perspective on environmental chaos in focus groups with a purposive sample of 18 teachers within 3 Catholic urban elementary schools. In these conversations, teachers differentiated between organized and disruptive chaos; they also felt that this latter type of chaos had a negative effect on their well-being, school functioning, and student learning

Author

• Ashley Anne Grant, Johns Hopkins University