CSEE’s Spiritual Climate Survey is a 28-item questionnaire to help schools assess student perceptions of the school’s environment for spiritual growth. Schools using the SCS are invited to include up to 5 additional questions with their own wording, to address issues of local concern. The survey is administered via internet. Individual student responses will thus remain anonymous.

 • Schools will receive ranges, mean and median scores for all items. If fewer than 20 students from a school complete the survey, only mean and median scores will be reported.
• Schools will also receive mean and median scores for the appropriate grade levels of all schools participating that are similar in size and/or religious affiliation.

 • one-time assessment to add information for a school auditing its spiritual life
• one-time assessment for purposes of program planning
• repeated assessments (after several months or a year) to assess school progress or fine-tune programs
• compare one’s school with a broader sampling of similar schools (no individual school’s data will be shared with others, but data from several schools will be aggregated, and broad scores available)

8-10 minutes estimated

Middle school and high school (younger students perhaps, with some adaptation)

(to be rated on a scale of 1 [strongly disagree] to 5 [strongly agree]
• There are adults I can talk to at school about spiritual issues.
• It is okay to talk about religion or spirituality at the lunch table or in other informal settings with students at my school
• My school does not seem to care about either religion or spirituality
• Students at my school are okay if religion or spirituality comes up during classroom discussion
• There is pressure at my school to accept the “party line” regarding religion
• I know that a number of teachers at my school seem to be interested in spiritual topics
• My school has helped my appreciation grow of what is religious or spiritual
• My school encourages students to find or think about the meaning and purpose of our lives
• I have grown spiritually because of my school

Baseline data will be collected from schools in October and November of 2009. CSEE member schools participating thereafter will pay a nominal fee of the greater of a) $25, or b) one dollar per student, to cover administrative costs.

 

The Spiritual Climate Survey emerged initially out of the limited amount of scholarly research in the area of spiritual development, and from the wisdom of spiritual writers of past centuries. It developed further from the work of CSEE’s Pathmaps team, a group of experienced independent school educators from four different religious traditions (and at least four denominations within Christianity). The measure was subsequently reviewed, improved, and augmented through the contributions of chaplains, spiritual directors, and teachers from over two dozen schools throughout the United States and Canada (see list in the box to the right on this page), and questions were refined based on the comments of these reviewers.