School Climate & Faith Engagement in Adventist Schools

This research examines how schools in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific can enhance students’ engagement in a personal faith journey.  Funded by the South Pacific Division of the Seventh-day Adventist church, it focuses on the perspective of students. Annual data collection with Year 4-12 students has taken place via both surveys and focus groups. To date, the project team has talked to over 850 students from participating schools.

Launched in 2021, this project has now completed four years of active data collection across 26 Seventh-day Adventist schools in Oceania. These schools span diverse contexts in Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. The project continues to deliver robust data illustrating the interconnectedness of school climate and student faith engagement, highlighting aspects of school life that contribute positively to the faith development of students.

Key insights:

Results demonstrate a significant relationship between school climate and faith engagement outcomes. School climate domains such as student-teacher relationships, connectedness/belonging, academic support, social atmosphere, and opportunities for engagement rate highly in terms of impact.  Results confirm that school climate is a multi-level (or nested) construct where influences at the individual, class-level, and school-wide level all contribute in significant ways.

The open-ended survey questions and student focus groups also revealed that in developing faith, students particularly respond to:

• staff taking a personal interest in them;
• teacher authenticity, approachability and relatability;
• having a safe place to be open, honest and to explore;
• Bible classes that are engaging and relevant to their lives;
• Week of Worship programs that are engaging, relevant to their lives and have strong student involvement;
• Opportunities for small group Bible studies outside the normal curriculum program;
• respect for their personal journey, i.e., ‘no pressure’;
• staff sharing their personal journey;
• authentic stories from other people;
• relevant and engaging discussions & activities with strong student involvement;
• fellow students sharing and leading;
• school discipline that is fair and respectful;
• faith growing opportunities outside the usual school environment/curriculum;
• a clear view in how it impacts and makes a difference to daily life;
• opportunities for service.

Impact and outcomes: 

The team is working on a set of tangible deliverables to support resource development and quality assurance in faith-based schools. These include: video resources for staff development and parent engagement, academic journal articles and presentations.

As a result of this study, Avondale University researchers have been engaged by Adventist Schools Australia to undertake quality improvement data collection and analysis across the Adventist school system in Australia to produce further insights around school climate, faith engagement, and other areas of interest.

Researchers:

A/Prof Kevin Petrie, Adjunct, Avondale University          

Prof Keith Zullig, Associate Dean for Departmental Affairs, West Virginia University

Dulcie Motamota, Pacific Adventist University

Ryan Whippy, Fulton Adventist University

Prof Tracie Mafile’o, Research Professor and Associate Dean Research and Research Training, Avondale University

Dr Brad Watson, Adjunct, Avondale University

PhD Candidate:

Tamar Aiono, HDR Candidate, Avondale University

Partners/Collaborators:

Prof Keith Zullig from West Virginia University

Research outputs:

Peer Reviewed Publications

Aiono, T., Petrie, K., & Morton, J. (2024). What matters most: Students speak about faith formation at school. TEACH Journal of Christian Education, 18(1).

Zullig, K.J., Matthews-Ewald, M.R., Petrie, K. (2021). School Climate. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_2597-2

Petrie, K., Marsters, G., McClintock, D., Lindsay, P., Allen, A., & Zullig, K. (2019). Faith engagement at school. In P. Kilgour & B. Christian (Eds.), Revealing Jesus in the learning environment: Experiences of Christian educators (pp. 163-179). Avondale Academic Press.

Petrie, K., Marsters, G., McClintock, D., Lindsay, P., Allen, A., & Zullig, K. (2019). The relationship between school climate and faith engagement. In P. Kilgour & B. Christian (Eds.), Revealing Jesus in the learning environment: Experiences of Christian educators (pp. 123-162). Avondale Academic Press.

Invited Conference Presentations

Petrie, K. (2025, March). What makes a difference in students' faith development. Abstract presented at the Andrews University Teaching & Learning Conference, Michigan, USA.

Petrie, K. (2025, March). The X-factor in student faith development. Abstract presented at the Adventist Schools NZ Hui, Auckland, NZ.

Petrie, K. (2023, July). Engaging our children in a faith journey. Abstract presented at the Trans-European Division Quinquennial Education Convention, Aranđelovac, Serbia.
Petrie, K. (2023, May). Engaging our students in a faith journey. Abstract presented at the 2023 ASA/NZPUC Education Leadership Conference, Brisbane, Australia.

Petrie, K., McClintock, D., Marsters, G., & Lindsay, P. (2019, October). The relationship between faith engagement and school climate at a faith based K-12 school. Abstract presented at the Kuyers Institute/ INCHE Conference, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retrieved from https://calvin.edu/centers-institutes/kuyers-institute/news-events/2019-conference/

Petrie, K. (2018, August). Student bullying, school climate and peer popularity. Abstract presented at the Student bullying and mental wellbeing conference. Sydney, Australia.

Funder(s) and amount:

South Pacific Division of SDAs: $539,000

Fields of Research Codes:

3902 Education policy, sociology and philosophy

3904 Specialist studies in education

Status:

Current (2021-2026)

More information:

[email protected]

Sustainable Development Goals: