| dc.description.abstract | This study examined school climate and faith maturity as
perceived by high school students in Metro Manila,
Philippines. Theory and prior research had suggested that a
significant relationship might exist between school climate
and student faith maturity.
The subjects were 360 students from public, private
sectarian, and private nonsectarian high schools. The study
analyzed the students' response to School Climate Survey
and the Thayer Faith Maturity Scale.
In this study, the typical hiqh school student was
between 13 to 16 years old, of Catholic religious
affiliation, and had remained in the same school be between
three to four years.
The major conclusions of this study were as follows:
(a) There are significant positive relationships between all
measured dimensions of school climate and faith maturity.
The strongest correlations were in the case of student
academic orientation, teacher-student reiationships, student
activities, and guidance, (b) The students perceive their
school climate to be generally positive and their level of
faith maturity to be quite high; (c) The students perceive
the least positive aspects of the school climate to be the
discipline orientation in the classroom and security and
maintenance in the school; (d) There are significant faith
maturity differences by gender and religious affiliation;
(e) There are significant differences in students'
perceptions of school climate by gender and number of years
attended the present school; (f) Students attending private
nonsectarian schools have significantly higher faith maturity
and more positive perceptions of school climate than their
counterparts attending public school; and (g) The best
predictive model of faith maturity (r2 =.35) was comprised of
the SCS subscales "Student Academic Orientaion," "Teacher-
Student Relationship," "Student Activities," and "Guidance," as well as the type of school and student gender.
Recommendations include teacher and student involvement
in the enrichment of the school climate, training of teachers
in the area of moral values, introduction of option in
spiritual activities, and strengthening the counselor services including trained personnel. In addition, public high school are recommended to stimulate fund-raising in order to take care of security and maintenance. Finally, male students are to be given special attention through appropriate models to
enrich their faith development. | en_US |
