School Climate and Teachers' Discipline Strategies on Students' Emotional Intelligence: Basis for a Reflective Journal

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Most educators agree that students are characterized as a young person who undergo the psychological, biological, physical, and social changes. This age reflects the time of the life when teenagers are forming their values and relations to society, family, friends, and school and mostly they are looking for their own identity. These changes in teenagers' personalities should be taken in consideration in teaching and learning process including their attitudes towards learning as well as their behavior. That is why this became a prevalent concern in most researches. This study was concerned in finding the relationship between school climate and teachers' classroom discipline strategies on students' Emotional Intelligence with an end of developing a reflective journal.

METHODS

The study was a descriptive research which utilized sets of questionnaires to gather the data. Respondents were103 secondary teachers, 561 high school students and 20 school heads from schools in Calauag and Tagkawayan, Quezon. Relevant data for this research were gathered through a validated researcher's self-devised questionnaire. Responses were treated statistically using weighted arithmetic mean and correlation.

RESULTS

1) As to perceptions on School Climate, each of the domains was Strongly Agreed by the students with the highest WM for Relationship with 3.41 and lowest WM for Safety and Teaching & Learning with both 3.28 respectively. 2) As to classroom discipline strategies of secondary school teachers, they Never Demonstrated Punishment on their students with a WM of 1.63 while they Always Demonstrated Discussion Strategy with a WM of 3.42. 3) As to students' Emotional Intelligence, respondents have the highest WM for Intrapersonal Skills and General Mood while they have lowest WM for Interpersonal Skills and Adaptability. 4) The student respondents were found out to have an Average level of Emotional Intelligence. 5) The domains of school climate (safety, relationship, teaching/ learning and physical environment) significantly affect students' Emotional Intelligence. 6) The domains of teachers' classroom discipline strategy (aggression, discussion, hinting, involvement, punishment and reward/ recognition) do not significantly affect students' Emotional Intelligence.

DISCUSSIONS

The results demonstrate that students from Calauag and Tagkawayan have a positive perception of their school climate. Most of the teachers are using Discussion as a form of discipline strategy in school. On the other hand, they are discouraged to implement Punishment and Aggression discipline strategies due to the existing "Child Protection Policy." The domains safety, relationship, teaching/ learning and physical environment significantly affect students' EI because the school climate has more impact on students' emotion since this includes outside factors that they are exposed to. Aggression, discussion, hinting, involvement, punishment and reward/ recognition do not significantly affect students' EI since teachers are not the only individual that they see in school. Another reason for this is that every teacher has his/her varied discipline strategies depending on the students' personality and every student has different impressions about his/her teachers. It may be implied that the study can also be undertaken within other localities/districts and may be correlated with other variables. The developed Reflective Journal on Exploring Students' Emotional Intelligence may be used for enhancing students' Emotional Intelligence on knowing their strengths, improving their weaknesses as well as awareness on the protection policies for them.