Well being at School: the impact of School Organizational Climate on teacher morale.

School Organizational Climate is a multidimensional psychological construct specific for schools contexts. Many studies underline its importance in sustaining teacher well-being. However, so far, few studies were addressed at identifying, among its various subdimensions, which are the specific predictors of teachers well-being. Among various tools used to measure organizational climate, the School Organizational Health Questionnaire (SOHQ: Hart et al., 2000) is one of the most comprehensive, consisting of eleven dimensions describing school climate (appraisal and recognition, curriculum coordination, effective discipline policy, excessive work demands, goal congruence, participative decision making, professional growth, professional interaction, role clarity and student orientation) plus one dimension, i.e., morale, which can be considered an important indicator of teacher well-being. According to Hart et al. (2000), morale can be defined as the energy, enthusiasm, team spirit and pride that teachers experience in their school. The aim of the present paper is to identify in a sample of primary and middle school teachers (n=378), the antecedents of morale, among the eleven subdimensions of SOHQ describing school climate. Through a multiple linear regression, the results identified three variables that positively affect morale: goal congruence (p=0.00), curriculum coordination (p=0.00) and participative decision making (p=0.09). In sum, the results show that teacher morale is greatly affected from organizational processes and less from social and work-related factors. Therefore, the present study suggests that measures addressed at fostering the quality of organizational processes may be implemented in order to enhance teacher well-being.