Classroom Emotional Climate: Nature, Measurement, Effects and Implications for Education // Cima emocional de clase: naturaleza, medida, efectos e implicaciones para la educación

Abstract

Classroom Emotional Climate (CEC) is a variable that is been connected with academic skills, satisfaction, psychological wellbeing. However, its definition, the limits of the construct and the relationship with others classroom factors are not clearly established. This study we develop and validate and an instrument, the Classroom Emotional Climate Questionnaire (CECQ), to assess the CEC and analyze the relationships between different components of classroom climate as well as their relative role for predicting students’ satisfaction with teachers’ socioemotional support and with sense of community. A total of 749 Secondary and High School students formed the sample. Students completed five questionnaires: Classroom Emotional Climate Questionnaire (CEC-Q); Classroom Motivational Climate Questionnaire (CMC-Q); Disruption Management Climate Questionnaire (DMC-Q); Sense of Community Questionnaire (SoC-Q); Satisfaction with Teacher's way of treating students Questionnaire (SAT-TWTS). For validating the CEC-Q structure, several models were tested trough confirmatory factor analyses, and for testing construct validity, correlation and regression analysis were realized using children's sense of community and satisfaction with teacher's socio-emotional support as external criteria. Results support hypotheses related to CEC-Q structure, to discriminant validity in relation to the other components of classroom climate, and to concurrent validity in relation to external criteria. These results underlie the importance of acting on CEC-Q and CMC components to favor students’ emotional satisfaction and sense of community.