Abstract:

Since its inception, the class has shown a unique history, as an open system with its own characteristics (therefore, it is also closed): it has implicit rules valid only on the inside and it grows thanks to interactions and relations among its members.

The focus on the school climate leads to interconnect the different plans that contribute to shaping the school system to place it in systemic theories . The school climate is thus transformed into a flow that goes through and permeates the system, maintaining the structure stationary but not inaccessible.

In many studies, the school climate is linked to better academic performance and reduced discipline problems . For this reason, it is often referred to as a goal of school improvement.

Under this point of view, the non-teaching staff plays a key role in the process of education and training to promote and support the development of human qualities and the individual and collective wellbeing.

This project is a population study which focuses on the Italian language schools in the South Tyrol.
We considerd the four orders of schools (Preschool, Elementary, Middle, High).

In Italy, there is no validated standardized to measure school climate. For this reason a questionnaire was developed to collect data in schools, used as a part of a pilot project headed by the research group of Dozza, Cavrini and Chianese, between January 2012 and April 2012, in collaboration with the Italian School Intendancy of the Province of Bolzano, in northern Italy.

The basis of the construction of the SCPQ (School Climate Perception Questionnaire) was the CSCI (The Comprehensive School Climate Inventory) questionnaire created by the National School Climate Council of New York.
We have administered 13,500 questionnaires and we have collected 10,130.

The goal of the present study was: to develop and validate a measure of school climate that could be used by parents, students, teachers and staff; to compare the perception of school climate by the different participants: parents, teachers, non-teaching staff and students; to develop an intervention plan to improve the school climate.

In particular, in this paper, we will present the preliminary results of comparison non-teaching perception.

Keywords:

School climate, perceptions, quantitative research.