A study of the association between organizational climates and the academic achievement of intermediate pupils in twenty schools in Iloilo City

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to discover the association between Organizational Climates and the Academic Achievement of intermediate pupils in twenty schools in Iloilo City. Two types of schools were studied-ten schools from the Division of City Schools and ten Independent Schools. Answers to these questions were also sought: 1. How do the perceptions of teachers in two types of schools compare concerning the behavior of their respective principals and co-teachers as measured by the eight dimensions of the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire? 2. What type of organizational climates exist among the twenty schools studied as measured by the OCDQ? 3. Is there a relationship between these perceived behaviors and the achievement in the three subjects tested? 4. Is school climate as identified by the OCDQ associated with achievement in Arithmetic, Reading, and language? What per cent of the variance is attributed to climate? To have more confidence in the instruments, the OCDQ and the Philippine Achievement Test, Form III, were submitted to tests for validity and reliability. The OCDQ which had 240 items was found to be too long, and so steps had to be taken to shorten it hopefully, without affecting its reliability. The OCDQ was submitted to twenty judges for Q-sorting and their evaluation underwent a test for agreements. The agreements for the items which were finally included in the research version had no agreement ratio below .60. After these items were removed, there were more than twenty items left in every subscale. The Q-sorting of the items done by thirty elementary school teachers and thirty graduate school students were analyzed. Only those items with a value of no less than .30 were included in the research version. The research version of the OCDQ had 120 items. When the scale was tested for reliability, the Coefficient Alpha of the eight subtests showed that there was no value below .65. For purposes of determining organizational climates in this research, the OCDQ was considered valid and reliable. The results showed that the "step-up" correlations of Arithmetic was .92; that of Reading, .95; language, .94. These reliability coefficients were comparable to those given by the Bureau of Public Schools for the same tests. The OCDQ was administered to 365 teachers of the twenty schools. The mean of the weighted scores of the teachers in the scale became the institutional score in that scale. To identify the organizational climates, a typology was constructed based on the institutional scores of the schools on the negative and positive scales of the OCPQ. Using the typology, five types of climates were identified--Controlled Climate, Open Climate, Closed Climate, Autonomous Climate, and Paternal Climate. The Philippine Achievement Test, Form III, was administered to 1,673 pupils in order to test their academic achievement. The mean of each school, was considered the institutional score in the achievement test in the subjects tested. The relationship between the achievements of pupils in each of the three subjects tested were compared with the perceptions of the teachers of the organizational behaviors of the principal as well as the other teachers. The organizational behaviors as perceived by the teachers in their own school were correlated with the achievement of their own intermediate pupils. This relationship was determined by using r correlations. Correlations below .44 (set by the r table of Garrett) were not considered high enough to establish significant relationships between behaviors and achievement. In this research, none of the perception scores of any organizational behavior in so far as measured by the OCDQ correlated significantly with achievement scores in Arithmetic, Reading, and Language. When the achievement of the five climate groups were compared for significant differences, the F ratio indicated that the achievement of the five groups had significant statistical differences. The analysis of variances for Reading, Language, and Academic Achievement yielded F ratios which exceeded the critical value of 3.06, thus the null hypothesis that the means of the five groups in these areas were equal, had to be rejected. Further analyses of these differences showed the following: 1. In Language, the means of schools belonging to the Controlled Climate were significantly superior to Autonomous Climate only and not to others. The mean differences between means of schools having Open and Autonomous Climates were high but not high enough to reach a level of significance. 2. In Reading, the mean of schools with Controlled Climate was superior to those of the Closed, Autonomous, and Paternal Climates but not over those with Open Climates. 3. In Academic Achievement, the schools with Controlled Climate did better academically than schools with Paternal Climate and Autonomous Climate but not those schools with Open Climate and Closed Climate. In this research, the following percentages of the variances in achievement may be due to organizational climates: 1. 21 per cent in Reading 2. 17 per cent in Language 3. 20 per cent in Academic Achievement The following recommendations are suggested by the study: 1. School administrators in the institutions which have been studied should discuss with their teachers the weak points which they perceived in their organizations. It is further recommended that group discussions be conducted so that more teachers will be involved in the search for solutions to the problems which have been exposed by the study. 2. Superintendents and institutional heads should conduct a study similar to this one where the organizational climates are associated with achievement. The results may help point out those behaviors which are correlated with low achievement and thus help them to establish in-service training programs for the improvement of administrative as well as supervisory practices. 3. Principals of these twenty schools should make more observations and conduct interviews to ferret out those points which were perceived by teachers as hindrance. Whatever is found should be used as a starting point for measures to improve conditions. 4. Principals of low-achieving schools should use the data of this study as points of departure to discuss sensitive matters which otherwise would be difficult since there would be no basis for bringing them out. 5. A study similar to this, made on the Division level by Superintendents should enable them to choose principals to handle certain schools. This study should be one where the OCDQ is used in order to find out what actually exists in terms of interactive-social behaviors and a study on what conditions teachers think should really be. A comparison of scores on these two would be most helpful to a school superintendent who would want to improve his organization. 6. Further research of this nature should be conducted on a wide area to include schools of different types, for example comparisons between Protestant and Catholic schools; purely girls’ schools and co-educational schools; schools in urban areas and rural areas and others. Studies of this nature will be most helpful to other researchers who may come after this study.