Do You Need a Climate Change in Your Classroom?

I think most people can agree that an openly intimidating and demeaning teaching style would be detrimental to your students...and you. (As an aside, it doesn’t work well in coaching either.) Surprisingly enough, I occasionally run into people who disagree. In both teaching and coaching, there are still folks out there who believe the aforementioned negative culture doesn’t impact classroom climate, team climate, or student performance in a negative way. But I’ll be honest--thankfully, I think the number of people riding the negativity train keeps reducing all the time. Realistically, though, there are subtle things we do, or don’t do, in our classroom that can make a huge impact. And the scary thing is that we may not even know we are doing them. My hope is to shed some light on these concepts and benefit everyone involved. The study I’m about to share with you involved students learning to juggle in PE class, but I truly believe that the same results would occur in a core classroom as well...and at all levels. 

The Study
About a year ago, my friend Troy Wineinger at the University of Kansas shared a recent study (2017) with me regarding the impact climate had on student performance at the middle school level. Here is the initial set-up: 

• Students were separated by gender and were randomly assigned to one of two groups: C/TI climate (Caring/Task Involving) or EI climate (Ego-Involving). 
• The C/TI climate would foster a cooperative atmosphere, treat mistakes as part of the learning process, and value effort and personal improvement. 
• The EI climate would promote intragroup rivalry, punish mistakes, and give the majority of praise and recognition to the highest performers.
• Cortisol levels would be measured via participant saliva samples. The samples were to be taken at the following time intervals relative to the start of the juggling session: 0, +30, +45, and +60 minutes. Why is cortisol important? Cortisol is the stress hormone. It reveals a great deal about a person’s psychobiological stress and general functioning. Heightened cortisol is linked to psychological disorders; depression; sleep disturbances; lessoned vigor, cardiovascular, and immune dysfunction; obesity; and behavioral problems. In addition, higher cortisol hinders performance academically and athletically. Yep, that’s right. Cortisol actually blocks the ability to perform at our best. In essence, cortisol is related to mental and physical health--and lower levels of cortisol are better.
• Once students were separated into groups, the trained instructors began teaching them in isolated areas. They were either in the C/TI group or the EI group, and neither group was aware of what was happening with the other. 
• The course took place over multiple weeks

Both the C/TI and EI instructors implemented a unique way to work with the students. 
​C/TI instructors:

• Created a cooperative atmosphere where students were encouraged to support one another 
• Made a genuine effort to get to know each student on an individual level
• Treated mistakes as part of learning
• Identified student strengths and built upon them
• Created a supportive environment where youth were treated with kindness and respect
• Fostered a sense of belonging to the group by promoting student-to-student connections
• Incorporated team building into the sessions
• Emphasized group success and how each individual plays a role in that success
• Promoted individual improvement not based on comparison

EI instructors (Did pretty much the opposite as the C/TI instructors)

• Promoted rivalry among students
• Ranked them based on performance: 1 = best; 10 = worst
• Punished mistakes by lowering a student’s ranking or taking away their juggling balls
• Spent time getting to know each juggler, but then spent more time with the better performers while outwardly praising them much more. 
• Instructional feedback was given by comparing individual students to the best performers

I like the varying instructors of this study because (1) each instructor group was almost the polar opposite, and (2) both instructor groups used techniques that people currently use both in the classroom and in athletics. These are representative of real teachers and coaches!

The Results
The data for the study were gathered in multiple ways: cortisol levels, performance, and student surveys (CCS--the Caring Climate Scale: a 13-item scale that measures to the extent which students feel cared for, valued, and respected). Although the students were separated by gender, results were consistent between both males and females.

• Cortisol Levels
  • C/TI students had 2x lower cortisol levels overall. The worst readings for the EI group came between the 30- and 45-minute marks--right in the heart of the session. Interestingly, the EI groups cortisol levels lowered at the 60-minute mark. I hypothesize this was because they knew it was finally almost all over. 
• Performance
  • C/TI students enjoyed their sessions much more, connected with peers, put forth more effort, showed grit, and achieved progress at a faster rate. Overall, they had more success and had fun while doing it. The EI students didn’t try as hard, gave up more easily, and didn’t enjoy the experience. 
• Caring Climate Scale
  • EI students noted much higher feelings of shame, anxiety, self-consciousness, social evaluation, and lower self-confidence. The levels of anxiety in EI participants were double compared to the C/TI group; students were also 2.5x more stressed. In addition, C/TI students had twice the self-confidence. 

What can we learn from this?
I think the largest takeaway from this study is that we need to pay attention to detail when creating our classroom culture and working with our students. I’ll stick with the positive lessons here. We need to foster a supportive environment between students, really get know each student on an individual level; search for and recognize individual improvement; treat mistakes as a natural part of the process; promote collaboration and cooperation. I know, I know--that’s a lot to keep track of. But if you work to create this environment early, it is self-sustaining, and student performance will go through the roof. 

A caring climate wins...in every category. Better stress levels. Better performance. Better psychological state. Whether a teacher, coach, administrator, or parent, how you interact and what you choose to focus on matters. When students are learning or working to improve, how we interact with them--and how we promote the interaction between them--matters. 
Climate Matters!


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Hogue, Candice M., et al. "The Differential Impact of Motivational Climate on Adolescents' Psychological and Physiological Stress Responses." Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 21 Feb. 2017, pp. 118-27.