The Organizational Climate of Schools in Five Urban Areas

Measuring Organizational Climate in Secondary Schools

“…Halpin and Croft, 1963;Brown. 1964;Vacchini, 1968;Kenney and Rentz, 1970;Mehra, 1973;McDill and Rigsby, 1973) clusters of schools having similar organizational climate were specified. An hierarchical grouping technique was used to group the schools according to likenesses in organizational climate.…”

A Typology of Primary-school Environments

“…By using the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire, Halpin and Croft (1963), Brown (1965), Kenny and Rentz (1970), Thomas and Slater (1972), and Hoy and Clover (1986) were able to classify organizational climate into several types along an open-closed continuum. For example, by separating social climate into principal's-behavior and faculty-relations dimensions, Hoy and Clover (1986) classified elementary schools into open, engaged, disengaged and closed climate types.…”

“…Human leadership refers to the extent to which the principal is supportive and fosters participation: structural leadership refers to the extent to which the principal thinks clearly and logically, develops clear goals and policies, and holds people accountable for results; political leadership refers to the extent to which the principal is persuasive and effective at building alliances and support and solving conflicts; symbolic leadership refers to the extent to which the principal is inspirational and charismatic; and educational leadership refers to the extent to which the principal emphasizes and encourages professional development and teaching improvement. In the past, using different conceptions, researchers had identified different typologies of school environments and had provided interesting implications for research and practice in school management and improvement (Brown, 1965;Cheng, 1991;Halpin and Croft, 1963;Hoy and Clover, 1986;Kenny and Rentz, 1970;Likert and Likert, 1978; Thomas and Slater, 1972). But there seem to be no past studies that use a comprehensive conception of school environment including the five basic aspects-the instructional, structural, human, cultural and political-to classify the school environments into a typology.…”

Psychometric Implications of the Unit‐of‐analysis Problem (With Examples From the Measurement of Organizational Climate)

“…We were able to locate only three studies in which the dimensionality in a set of items was explored using something other than the correlation matrix computed across individuals. Taylor and Bowers (1972) Rentz, 1970 andHayes, 1973. ) This instrument (adapted from the College Characteristics Index, Pace and Stern, 1958) is designed to assess students' perceptions of thelrlearning environment, technically placing it in a different class from those instruments designed to assess ~' perceptions of their work environment.…”