ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the classroom climate – including both the physical and socio-emotional elements and their effects on pupils' behaviour, motivation, relationships and well-being. It also focuses on the social psychological effects of classroom climate on pupils' motivation, emotions and behaviour. Teachers should manipulate the physical environment to suit learning and behavioural needs. In recent years, it has been a popular assumption that groupwork inevitably enhances pupil learning. There are many ways of organising groups in classroom and the chapter discusses four arrangements and highlight their suitability for different types of teaching and learning. They are: coffee bar, nightclub, open circle, and horseshoe layouts. Significant relationships exist between classroom climate and pupil engagement, behaviour, self-efficacy, achievement, and social and emotional development. Those who repeatedly attribute their failures in academic or social endeavours to internal-stable-uncontrollable factors and successes to external-unstable-uncontrollable factors develop maladaptive motivational styles. Two types of maladaptive style have been identified – self-worth protection and learned helplessness.
