Healthy schools, robust schools and academic emphasis as an organizational theme

Abstract

Positive interpersonal relations among students, teachers and administrators that help the school meet the demands of its environment have been described as organizational health. When schools operate in ways that regularly result in student and teacher empathy and involvement, they can be considered relatively robust organizations. This study employed a sample of 38 junior high and middle schools to test a hypothesis predicting a significant positive relationship between school health and robustness. Multiple regression analysis tended to support this hypothesis, suggesting a positive association between teachers’ perceptions of organizational health and environmental robustness. However, only one school health measure, teachers’ perceptions of a healthy school‐level emphasis on the academic success of their students, made a significant and separate contribution to the overall relationship between school health and robustness. Apparently, when schools are healthy and robust, academic emphasis is a predominant organizational theme.