An Investigation of Students' Perceptions about Democratic School Climate and Sense of Community in School

This study aims to investigate students' perceptions about democratic school climate and sense of community in school. In line with this purpose, it aims to find answers to the following questions: How democratic do students find the school climate? What is students' sense of belonging level at school? What is the academic success level of students? Is there a significant relationship between students' democratic school climate scores and sense of community in school scores? The study, which was designed as a descriptive one to identify the present situation, made use of democratic school climate scale as data collection tool. Students' academic success was evaluated based on their grade point averages. The participants were students in a School of Foreign Languages department in a university in southern Turkey. The study utilized descriptive statistics and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient analysis techniques. It was found that students' sense of community in school perceptions were higher than their perceptions about democratic school climate. Although there was not a high relationship between academic success and perceptions about sense of community in school and democratic school climate, students with very low academic success had low perceptions about democratic school climate and sense of community in school. As for those with very high academic success, they were found to have high perceptions in relation to these variables. In line with the findings obtained from the study, some recommendations were made for democratic school climate. [This study was presented at VI. International Conference on Critical Education (August 10-13, 2016, London, England).]