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Journal Of Diversity In Higher Education

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A majority of school climate research has focused on the K-12 environment (Anderson, 1982; Beets, Flay, Vuchinich, Acock, Li, & Allred; 2008, Brand, Felner, Shim, Seitsinger, & Dumas, 2003; Bulach, & Malone, 1994; Ma & Klinger, 2000; MacNeil, Prater, & Busch, 2009). More recently, researchers have turned their attention to school climate on college and university campuses (Worthington, 2008; Rancon & Reson, 2008; Hart and Fellabaum, 2008). Two primary issues related to the need to monitor school climate and culture in higher education have taken shape over the past twenty years. One of the issues that has attracted considerable attention in higher education is the school climate experienced by racially, ethnically, and economically diverse …show more content…

The Journal of Diversity in Higher Education (December, 2008) devoted an entire issue to scholarly research on the measurement and assessment of campus-wide climate. This issue provided perspectives on definitions of school climate, as well as frameworks for studying the construct, and offered specific questionnaires. While the journal issue was useful to understand the current scholarship on school climate in higher education, the specific frameworks and questionnaires were ultimately not used, as the questionnaires were too specific or not relevant for our purposes as the instrument was at the School/College level. For example, articles focused on aspects of school climate that were either too specific or encompassed domains outside of the aim (e.g., Hurtado, Griffin, Arellano, & Cuellar, 2008; Hutchinson, Raymond, & Black, 2008). However, Rankin and Reason (2008) outlined a model to assess and transform school climate, with a particular emphasis on diversity. Although the actual framework proposed was not utilized, this article highlighted the importance of assessing this issue and contributed to use of diversity in our survey. Additional literature was sought to index climate surveys …show more content…

Specifically, the intent of this research is to share:
1) The significant history of measuring school climate at this one School/College;
2) The integrated summary of scholarly literature about climate including existing higher education institutional measures;
3) The rationale behind why institutional measures needed further refinement for the School/College level;
4) How the assessment committee played a vital role;
5) Results of the item and exploratory factor analyses results; and,
7) Recommendations for the longitudinal administration of the instrument in the same institution and offer recommendations for others that which to foster the philosophy that climate and student achievement are interconnected.
This study used a quantitative mode of inquiry to address the major research question: What are the underlying dimensions/domains and the associated reliabilities of the item

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