School Climate and Administration

Abstract

Many of the strategies that have been suggested to help schools cope with school disorder have to do with how a school is run. The theoretical work done in preparation for the Safe School Study (Williams, Moles, & Boesel, 1975) implied that attitudes, beliefs, and values; school govern­ance and administration; the ways in which rules are applied and formulated; school educational orientations; and grading practices are all potentially important. The development of the instruments used in the Safe School Study was guided by these speculations and by theoretical work by Spady (1974), Polk and Schafer (1972), and Hirschi (1969). As a consequence, the Safe School Study survey instruments collected a broad range of information pertinent to the evaluation of these speculations. This chapter summarizes research on the dimensions of school climate and administration, and it examines the relations of these dimensions to school disorder.