School Climate in Low-and Middle-Income Countries: Concept, Assessment and Practice

• In Event: Child, school climate, and social emotional learning in LMICs

Proposal

Most school climate studies to date have focused on high-income countries, and there is limited understanding of the concepts and constructs that encompass school climate in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study reviews and examines school climate in the context of low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) with two main questions: (1) How are school climate conceptualizing and measured in LMICs and what are the gaps? (2) What are the main challenges in initiating school climate improvement efforts in LMICs? The first question is investigated via systematic review of empirical studies that assessed school climate quantitatively, focusing on low- and middle-income countries published between 2000-2022, drawing on an existing framework to examine how the constructs studied fit (or did not) under the five major school climate constructs as identified by Thapa et al. (2013): (a) Safety, (b) Relationships (c) Teaching and Learning (d) Institutional Environment, and (e) the School Improvement Process. The search identified 4,372 articles for title and abstract and then full-text screening. Out of this, 173 studies finally made to the pool that satisfied the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Members of the research team used the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database, accessed through ProQuest and the University of Pennsylvania library system, to execute a comprehensive search of peer-reviewed journal articles published on or after Jan 1, 2000, that focused on school climate and its major components in formal K-12 schools in low- and middle-income countries. The search was limited to articles written in English as this was the only language spoken commonly by the entire research team. The second question was investigated via in-person interviews and focus groups in LMICs from South Asia and Africa. Results from the literature review suggest increasing interest and attention on school climate in low- and lower-middle income countries, particularly after 2016 when the majority of studies reviewed were published. The study found that there is significant non-representation across regions and countries in the literature to date: the vast majority of studies were conducted in Asia, with much lower representation of African and Latin American and Caribbean countries. Furthermore, the results showed that the studies represented mostly middle-income countries than low-income countries and that they focused on the ‘secondary’ level of schooling. In terms of domains, results indicated that more than half of the studies focused on constructs related to the domain of ‘Relationships’, followed by ‘Teaching and Learning,’ ‘Institutional Environment,’ and ‘Safety.’ Findings from the qualitative approach suggested that there are still taboo in talking about social emotional learning and hence better awareness needs to be brought in LMICs with regards to school climate and social emotional learning. The study recommends that there is a greater need for research in the lowest resource settings and a need to connect school climate to other important policy issues such as school-based violence and gender inequality.

Authors

• Amrit Thapa, University of Pennsylvania

• Sharon Wolf

• Tanya Muralidharan Nair, University of Pennsylvania