School climate and kindness in school with perspective of middle school students and teachers

The aim of this research is to examine the level of school climate and kindness at school of secondary school students and teachers. In addition, it is also aimed to examine whether school kindness is a significant predictor of school climate. The final aim of the study is to examine whether school climate and school kindness differ significantly according to various socio-demographic variables. The sample of the research consists of 891 students studying at Kabakulak Secondary School, Atatürk Secondary School, Cumhuriyet Secondary School and Paris Secondary School in Akyazı district of Sakarya and 65 teachers working in the same schools. School Climate Scale, School Kindness Scale, School Climate Scale and finally Organizational Virtuousness Scale were used to collect the data of the study. For the analysis of the collected data, SPSS 26.0 program was used and simple regression analysis, t-test, one-way analysis of variance and Kruskal Wallis analyzes were used. According to the findings of the study, school kindness was found to be a significant predictor of school climate for both students and teachers. While the school kindness of the students explains 37% of the school climate scores, this rate is 53% for the teachers. On the other hand, while the school climate and school kindness levels of the students do not differ according to gender; It has been found that it differs according to class level, socio-economic status perception and academic success perception. The school climate and school kindness levels of teachers did not differ according to their gender. These findings were discussed in the light of the results of previous studies in the literature. Keywords: school climate, kindness, secondary school.