THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL CLIMATE AND STUDENTS' ENGAGEMENT AT SCHOOL

The school climate is a construct that can adequately represent the quality of school life. School climate is the sum of perceptions of teachers, parents, students and administration about different aspects of school functioning and has an impact on their lives. The aim of the research was to determine the relationship between the school climate and student engagement. The sample consists of 332 high school students from Sombor and Novi Sad. The Delaware School Climate Scale was used, namely the School Climate and Student Engagement subscales. Prior to data processing, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm the latent dimensionality of the used instruments. Then, descriptive indicators were presented. According to descriptive indicators students assess the school climate moderately, and on average they are more cognitively/behaviourally engaged than emotionally. The intercorrelation table indicates low to moderate correlations between variables. In order to respond to the aim of the study, two multiple regression analyses were performed. Regression analysis shows that teacher student relations are statistically significant predictor of all three types of student engagement, while fairness of school rules appears as a statistically significant predictor of cognitive/behavioural student engagement, and the factor respect for diversity of students' emotional engagement. Similar results are found in other studies conducted around the world.