Students' well-being, coping, academic success, and school climate

This article presents the results of a student survey conducted in 2004 at Tallinn University within the framework of the project "School as a developmental environment and students' coping." The questionnaire was completed by 3,838 7th, 9th and 12th grade students from 65 Estonian schools. The project arose from the need to prevent students from school drop-out and repeating grades. The main hypothesis was that by modifying a school's social climate, one can either help or disable the development of students' constructive coping strategies and thus support, or not, students' academic success. Our most important conclusion is that the school climate parameters, especially the school value system and teachers' attitudes toward students as perceived by the latter, influence students' optimistic acceptance of life, their psychological and physiological well-being, and academic success.