Kenneth Stichter
Department of Educational Leadership
California State University, Fullerton

This longitudinal trend study investigated student satisfaction perceptions of instructional climate in one high school district. The purpose was to probe what students define as instructional climate and whether their perception changed during a decade of expanding emphasis on accountability in California. Archival data from six biennial surveys conducted over 10 years were analyzed using factor analysis to identify a sustained instructional climate factor. Factor loading items were tracked over the six survey cycles for purposes of ascertaining how student satisfaction scale components performed. Findings suggest that as the emphasis on standardized testing and accountability in California was ramped up between 1999 and 2009 student satisfaction levels with instructional climate kept pace. Student perception was that their satisfaction with the instructional climate was improving. Also, student satisfaction with instructional climate appeared to be viewed through the lens of student experience in English and mathematics courses.

Introduction

             The first decade of the 21^st Century has asked much of America’s schools. This is especially true for high schools where state and national accountability driven testing has added to a previously existing regimen of tests that include PSAT, SAT, ACT, AP and IB. Now high school students must also be prepared for state standards exams, high school exit exams, and federal academic performance expectations. For California high schools, as with high schools elsewhere, the state accountability system generates increasing amounts of data regarding student academic performance which, in turn, generates increasing pressure to improve instruction. There can be little doubt that the current instructional climate for high school students is much different now than a decade earlier.

             But what is the effect of all of this on student perceptions of instruction? Just how satisfied are high school students with their instructional experience? True, there are test results that give us some insight into student achievement, but such data do little to inform us on how students view their learning experience. It seems reasonable to expect that efforts to improve instruction should also reflect improved learning experience perceptions on the part of students.

Purpose

             The purpose of this study was to investigate student perceptions of what constitutes instructional climate in one high school district and to further explore student satisfaction levels with instructional climate over time. Certainly student performance on standardized testing is critical feedback regarding instructional program effectiveness. However, an assumption in this study was that student attitudes about their instructional experience is also an important measure of evolving accountability efforts. This study did not correlate student satisfaction perceptions with achievement on state accountability measures. No doubt there is a relationship between student satisfaction levels and achievement outcomes, but what was of interest here was whether the pressure for instructional improvement in high school is reflected in improved student perception of the learning experience.

Literature

             The relationship between school climate and school effectiveness has been extensively explored (Witcher, 1993, Hoy & Miskel, 1996; Hoy, Hannum & Tschannen-Moran, 1998). Research has also found that school climate data is an effective instrument for assessing efforts to improve the instructional environment (Freiburg, 2003). According to Stevens and Sanchez (2003), instructional environment and instructional process are essential ingredients in an effective school climate. Instructional climate is directly related to what teachers do in class (Freiberg & Stein, 2003; Stevens & Sanchez, 2003). Since students are on the receiving end of the instructional process, their perceptions should shed light on effectiveness in the larger learning experience in this era of high stakes accountability.

             For purposes of this study, instructional climate was defined as the shared student perceptions of what transpires in the environment and activities associated with the academic experiences of students in the typical high school classroom. Research has found that the routines of school promote enduring perceptions of climate (Freiberg, 2003; Hoy & Feldman, 2003; Hoy & Miskel, 1996). Ellis (1988) found that climate qualities are the aggregate of complex relationships which can be described. Freiberg and Stein (2003), in discussing the durability of a healthy learning environment, advance the idea that the lasting quality of a school climate is likely due to the aggregate of many “little things linked together over time” (p. 26). If this collective quality is true for the larger context of school climate it is reasonable to expect that instructional climate exhibits similar characteristics.

             Also of interest to this study were Fraser’s (2003) findings that improving student achievement is closely allied with learning environment. Student perceptions have been found to be effective measures of school learning environment (Goh, Young & Fraser, 1995). But school learning environment is much more encompassing than instructional climate. Instructional climate, for purposes of this study, is more akin to Stevens and Sanchez’s (2003) definition of instructional environment and instructional process constructs that include teacher academic pedagogy and how students view their relationship with the teacher.

Orginally posted on Nonpartisan Education Review