Hidden curriculum while constructing classroom climate: A research on vocational schools

Classroom climate is described as the classroom?s social-psychological context created to foster learning. It is important to investigate this context especially in vocational schools, which were attended by students who are disadvantaged in terms of cultural capital. After 8th grade students are directed to different kinds of schools according to their success, the same curricula is followed for 9th grades in all school types. Truancy and failure rates are the top at 9th grade in vocational schools, thus to investigate classroom climate in detail this grade come into prominence. The aim of this study is to determine vocational school 9th grades? classroom climate related to students? perception and to explore how classroom interaction differs in positive and negative classroom climate with respect to hidden curriculum. For that purpose, the research design is based on sequential explanatory mixed method. Firstly, ?Classroom Climate Perceived by Students Scale?, which was developed by the researcher, was applied to all 9th grade students. The means and standard deviations of total score and the dimensions were determined for each class, k sample median test and ANOVA is applied to determine whether there is significant difference between classes. According the results, two classrooms which have positive and negative climate were determined and in these classrooms observations were carried out for the period of 3 moths. At the end of the observation period, interviews were carried out with 18 students, (nine from each class; 3 upper, 3 intermediate, and 3 lower succeed students) and a teacher who give lectures to the both classes. Classroom Climate Perceived by Students Scale which was used in the research has four dimensions which are peer support, teacher support, academic efficacy, and satisfaction. 29 items likert scale?s peer support dimension explains %31.46, teacher support dimension explains %10.73, satisfaction dimension explain %4.76 and academic efficacy dimension explains %3.41 of total variance. The eigenvalues of these dimensions are 9.598 for peer support, 3.59 for teacher support, 1.85 for satisfaction, 1.47 for academic efficacy. The scale, which is developed on the data gathered from 422 students and practiced criterion related reliability on 229 students, is applied to 391 students in 2011-2012 academic year. As a result of statistical analysis, one class was chosen for positive classroom climate, another one for negative classroom climate. Observations and interviews reveals that in the class that has positive climate, there occurs; much more noise than the other, more uncertainty about classroom rules, more teacher intervention to students? behavior and more frequent negative teacher behavior towards the students in general, as a result of less academic interest to the courses. This case can be explained by students? ?resistance? to the given lectures. However, in the class that have positive climate despite the inattention to the courses, students aware of how oral exam scores are important for them and choose to use ?paying a compliment? to the teacher as a tool to get higher oral exam scores. Generally in both classes, negative behaviors are more common not only as frequency, but also as diversity than positive behaviors. When positive behaviors in both positive and negative classroom climate classes are investigated it is seen that, there are more positive behaviors between teachers and students as frequency and diversity in positive classroom climate class. This case may be an indicator of teachers? ?reverse discrimination? to motivate students to the courses in positive classroom climate class.