SCHOOL CLIMATE AND THE SENSE OF COHERENCE AMONG ADOLESCENT STUDENTS WITH DYSLEXIA

Sense of coherence, according to its creator A. Antonovsky (2005) is generalised emotional and cognitive orientation that expresses the extent to which one has dynamic but pervasive feeling that:
1) the stimuli deriving from one's internal and external environments are predictable and explicable;
2) the resources are available to one to meet the demands posed by these stimuli;
3) the demands are worth of investment and engagement.

Shaping these variables has been subject to research for many years. However the phenomenon remains unexplained, especially for the time of adolescence. Due to the importance of school environment during that time, the aim of this research was to examine the relationship between school climate in the perception of students with dyslexia and those without it, and their sense of coherence.

In the research 2 tools were used: Klimat w mojej szkole (2006) [Climate in my school] and SOC-13M scale adapted to Polish by M. Zwoliński, I. Jelonkiewicz, and K. Kosińska-Dec (2001). The tool for measuring the school climate characterizes it in the 9 dimensions of climate: satisfaction from school learning, creating students possibility to take part in the life of class community, teachers' support, students attitude towards learning and class behaviour, motivation for achieving successes, perception of students rights, familiarity with rules and their assessment, feeling of being overloaded with school work and stress, and the presence of school violence and anti-social behaviours among students.

The research were done on 97 adolescents aged 13 to 17 (M=15.00; SD=0.791), including 47 with dyslexia (M=14.70; SD=0.720) and 50 without it (M=15.28 SD=0.757). The result of the co-relation analysis was that there is a relation between the dimensions of the climate: relationships between students and presence of school violence and anti-social behaviours, and the sense of coherence of students with dyslexia. The more the students with dyslexia feel their relations, pertaining to the sense of friendliness, acceptance, and receiving help in difficult situation, with other students are positive the higher is their sense of coherence. Moreover, it was showed that the stronger the students with dyslexia have feeling that there is physical and psychological violence among students the lower is their sense of coherence. This kind of relationship was not observed for the dimensions of climate pertaining to the teacher. Concluding, the results obtain allow for making a claim that for the sense of coherence of adolescents with dyslexia the quality of interpersonal relations between students is important. The positive quality of peer relations is probably important variable for the endurance resources, which give a chance of successfully coping with difficult situations.

In case of students without dyslexia it was shown that there is a relationship between the positive dimensions of school climate: school satisfaction and relationship between students and the sense of coherence. The better the assessment of the school activities by the students as interesting and broadening their knowledge, the higher their sense of coherence. Moreover, similarly as students with dyslexia, the more positively they are in percieving relations with peers the higher is their sense of coherence.