The role of school climate on primary school students’ mental health : the mediating role of stress

Abstract

The current study aimed to explore the relationship between perceived school climate, stress, and mental health status among 319 primary school students. The dual-factor model of mental health that considered both subjective wellbeing and level of psychopathology was used to determine students’ mental health status. It was hypothesized that school climate would positively predict students’ mental health and negatively predict students’ stress level, while stress would negatively predict students’ mental health condition and mediate the relationship between school climate and student mental. As local instrument for measuring school climate was lacked, it was measured with an instrument developed from the Western educational setting and factor analysis was used to evaluate it. Findings revealed five dimensions of school climate, namely positive student-teacher relationships, academic support, order and discipline, school environment, and perceived privilege, which were used in subsequent analysis. Results from multinomial logistic regression showed that most of the school climate dimensions did not predict students’ mental health status except that the Positive Student-Teacher relationships dimension significantly distinguished students with high subjective wellbeing and low level of psychopathology from students with low subjective wellbeing and high level of psychopathology. Students’ stress level significantly distinguished between students with various levels of subjective wellbeing and psychopathology. Moreover, school climate as a whole was not a significant predictor of students’ stress, as only the Order and Discipline dimension showed significant predictive power. Implications for educators and directions for future research are discussed.