School Climate and Citizenship: Portuguese Pupils’ Overview

Abstract

School is both time and space of experience and citizenship. Students as individuals, create and recreate meaning on how to be in school and society, different affiliations that sustain their identity and the various spheres of participation. When defining citizenship we noted three dimensions: the person, the social ties and participation. Based on school climate – which we assume is what actors mostly represent and feel of their organization – this study takes four dimensions into account: relationships with various school stakeholders, equity, safety and working conditions. The sample included 3617 students from 5th to 12th grade education originating from 13 schools. The data instrument is a questionnaire on school climate, experiencing school aspects and the value attributed to being a citizen. School climate is globally positive, except for the working conditions dimension. The added value of the citizenship dimension varies according to different dimensions. School climate, experiencing school and the citizenship value have highly statistically significant relationships among all dimensions. The most favorable school climate appears consistently linked to the feeling of belonging, to teachers’ democratic leadership and to the valorization of citizenship dimensions. These results suggest that school climate and its relation to the meaning that students give to citizenship come from the relevance of the care of relationships between the different school actors.