Effects of classroom climate on children's social behaviors and their relations to school adjustment in rural China (Chinese text)

Few studies have explored the effects of classroom climate on the relations of children's social behaviors to school adjustment. Even fewer studies have been conducted based on rural Chinese children. This dissertation is among the first to make these two additions to the literature by exploring the effects of such classroom climate as teacher warmth, teacher admonishment, student relationship, class order and rule clarity, respectively, on the relations of prosocial, aggressive, victimized, delinquent and withdrawn behaviors to children's school adjustment in a sample of rural Chinese school children.; Participants consisted of 3059 middle school students from 37 classes of a rural area in northern China. Peer nominations were used to measure children's prosocial, aggressive, withdrawn, victimized, and delinquent behaviors and peer acceptance. Classroom climate included teacher warmth, teacher admonishment, student relationship, class order and rule clarity. They were measured by student self-reports that were aggregated into classroom variables. Student academic achievement consisted of final exam scores for Chinese, mathematics, and English. Multilevel path analyses were used to explore the effects of classroom climate on the relations between children's social behaviors and their academic achievement and peer acceptance.; Results showed that children's prosocial behavior positively predicted academic achievement and peer acceptance, whereas aggression, withdrawal, victimization and delinquency negatively predicted these two school adjustment variables. Except for prosocial behavior, the relations of different social behaviors to school adjustment varied significantly across classes. Multilevel results showed that teacher warmth negatively predicted aggression, withdrawn, victimization and delinquency. Teacher admonishment reduced the negative relation between aggression, withdrawn, victimization, delinquency, respectively, to school adjustment variables. Student relationship reinforced the negative relations of aggression, withdrawn, victimization, delinquency, respectively to school adjustment variables. Classroom order and rule clarity also enhanced the negative relation between aggression, withdrawn, victimization, delinquency, respectively, to school adjustment. However, classroom climate variables had little effect on prosocial behavior and its relations to school adjustment variables.; These results provide different understandings of children's school adjustment that is subject to the influence of children's social behaviors and peer relationship but also to the classroom climate and cultures. These findings also provide useful insights into rural Chinese middle schools and should help teachers to better understand and develop students' social behaviors. Teachers and researchers need to consider classroom cultures when studying and defining desirable versus undesirable social behaviors and how these behaviors contribute to successful versus unsuccessful school adjustment of the children.