Students' perception of school moral atmosphere: From moral culture to social competence. A generalizability study

Abstract

The School Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire (SMAQ) was constructed to measure differences in students' perception of school moral atmosphere between schools. The instrument is based upon the constructs defined by the Just Community Approach that focused on students' shared perspective and portrayed ideal types of school moral culture. This study presents reliability estimates of the SMAQ based on a generalizability study. A total of 1280 students from 32 normal secondary schools participated in the study. The design of the study includes the factors: type of school varying in educational level; school; grade level; class; and student. Variance components and reliabilities are estimated for two models. In Model 1 grade level is a fixed effect, in Model 2 grade level is a random effect. The results indicate that moral atmosphere in school can be measured reliably, although in Model 2 a considerable number of observations may be needed. Because score levels for some subscales depend on the school type, reliabilities are higher for the entire population than for populations consisting of one particular school type. It is concluded that students' perception of moral atmosphere in normal secondary schools have a strong individual flavour. Perceived moral atmosphere should not be regarded primarily as a shared perspective among students within a school like a moral school culture, but as an instance of the social competence of the individual student.

Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for its financial support of project 590 – 290 – 501. The second author is also indebted to NWO for grant no R 56 – 460.