The Emotional Climate Scale: Understanding Emotions, Context and Justice

Abstract

The Emotional Climate Scale (ECS) was used to study the emotional responses of minority and majority elementary school students to different settings within their schools. The ECS applies a 7 point Likert scale to assess the emotions of anger, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, calmness, excitement, happiness, and hope in the school settings of the school bus, the playground, the principal office as well as the English, mathematics, social studies, and science classes. Minority children are significantly happier and lonelier on the bus and they are also more excited, angry and lonely in English classes than their white peers. In math classes minority children are more excited but lonelier. On the playground minority children are significantly sadder than majority children. In the principal’s office, minority children are significantly calmer than majority children. In science, minority children were significantly more excited and hopeful. In social studies minority children were also more excited. In the gym, there were no significant differences between majority and minority children. Excitement and happiness are the two positive emotions are preferred and appropriate for all classes. A key question raised by the ECS is the question “Is this school fair to minority children?” The presence of loneliness, sadness, and anger are troubling indicators of something that is not right in this school.