Heterogeneity of Student Perceptions of the Classroom Climate: A Latent Profile Approach

• In Event: 49.034 - Student Heterogeneity in the Classroom: Precursors and Links to Outcomes

Abstract

Motivation scholars underscore the importance of students’ individual perceptions of the learning environment for explaining learning-related outcomes, such as academic motivation and achievement (Ames, 1992; Eccles, 1983). Indeed, students in the same classroom often perceive their teacher’s instructional or motivational practices quite differently (Chang, Ruzek, Schenke, Conley, & Karabenick, under review; Miller & Murdock, 2007). However, systematic investigation of within-classroom differences in student reports of the classroom climate is exceedingly rare, and an understanding of how the qualitative differences in these perceptions relate to classroom-level outcomes is lacking. Accordingly, this paper explores heterogeneity of student perceptions of the classroom emotional (emotional support), motivational (achievement goal structure), and instructional (academic press) climate in relation to classroom-level mathematics achievement.

Motivational climate is indicated by classroom goal structure, i.e., the extent to which the classroom is focused on learning and understanding (mastery) and the extent to which it is focused on demonstrating performance (Ames, 1992). A classroom is classified as emotionally-supportive to the extent that students’ social and emotional functioning is promoted (Pianta, Hamre, Haynes, Mintz, & LeParo, 2012). Academic press involves a classroom emphasis on student explanations that demonstrate comprehension and an encouraging of effort (Middleton & Blumenfeld, 2000). Using these classroom climate dimensions, we aim to: identify and describe the profiles of students’ perceptions of the classroom along these dimensions of the classroom, and understand the association between number of profiles present in the classroom and classroom achievement.

Student survey and achievement data are drawn from 3,486 ethnically diverse 7th through 11th grade students in 210 mathematics classrooms. We examined end of the school year student survey responses (PALS; Midgley et al., 2000) and mathematics achievement on the California Standards Test (CST). Scales of students’ perceptions of the mastery goal structure, performance goal structure, emotional support, and academic press were created by averaging their corresponding items (alphas for the scales = .83-.95).

We used Latent Profile Analysis to identify common patterns of student perceptions across the four classroom scales, settling on a four-profile solution (Figure 1), which described students that perceive the classroom as: cold and hands off (Profile 1; 7% student endorsement), goldilocks (Profile 2; 25% student endorsement), some warmth (Profile 3; 37% student endorsement), and warm promoting effort and challenge (Profile 4; 35% student endorsement). The number of profiles contained in classrooms ranged from two to four.

Results of ordinary least squares regression (Table 1) indicated that the presence of fewer profiles in a classroom was associated with higher classroom mathematics achievement such that two profiles was the most adaptive when compared with three and four profiles (beta = .48, p = .001). Further, classroom achievement improved the most when a higher percentage of classmates endorsed the warm promoting effort and challenge profile (beta = .19, p < .001). Additional analyses will describe how the combination of number and type of profiles present, dominant classroom profile, and the combination of number and type of profiles present relate to classroom level outcomes (i.e., achievement, motivation, help seeking).

Authors

• Katerina Schenke, University of California - Los Angeles

• Arena C. Lam, WestEd

• Erik Ruzek, University of Virginia

• AnneMarie M. Conley, University of California - Irvine

• Stuart A. Karabenick, University of Michigan