Antisocial Behavior, Academic Failure, and School Climate

Abstract

Researchers have demonstrated a strong correlation between antisocial behavior and academic failure among students.Yet current educational programs designed to modify one or both of these patterns of conduct tend to be limited in at least two fundamental ways. First, they tend to treat conditions associated with academic achievement as separate from those associated with violent or other antisocial behavior. Second, they often focus narrowly on modifying selected cognitions or personality characteristics of the individual (e.g., changing attitudes and beliefs).Yet both antisocial behavior and academic failure are context specific; each occurs within a climate in which conditions can be identified that reasonably predict problematic behavior and can be modified to reduce such behavior.The success of prevention and intervention programs, therefore, hinges on their ability to identify and modify climates in which academic failure and antisocial behavior emerge. In this article we examine the role of school climate in guiding programs designed to reduce academic failure and antisocial behavior among students defined as "at risk." Suggestions are offered for improving such educational programs in a manner consistent with research on school climate and effective schools.