How School Climate Affects the Development of the Social and Emotional Skills of Underprivileged-Background Students—An Empirical Study Based on the SSES2019 Data

Background: Promoting the development of the social and emotional skills of underprivileged-background students is an integral part of educational and social equity. To date, there has been a lack of relevant research in this field. Aims: This study investigated the impacts of cooperative school climate and competitive school climate on the development of the social and emotional skills of underprivileged-background students. Sample: This study used the data of Chinese underprivileged-background students (N = 1739) from the Study on Social and Emotional Skills conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD-SSES2019). Methods: This study selected the ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis method and the quantile regression (QR) analysis method. Results: The ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis results showed that cooperative school climates promoted the development of various dimensions of the social and emotional skills of underprivileged-background students, while competitive school climates had significant negative impacts on the collaboration and emotional regulation of underprivileged-background students and had no significant impact on the other three major domains, namely engagement with others, open-mindedness, and task performance. A quantile regression analysis further explored the heterogeneity in the impacts of cooperative school climate and competitive school climate on the development of the social and emotional skills of underprivileged-background students through quantile regression and found that the impacts of a competitive school climate on underprivileged-background students with different levels of social and emotional skills were homogeneous, while the impacts of a competitive school climate on underprivileged-background students with different levels of social and emotional skills were heterogeneous. Conclusions: These findings provide a greater insight into the roles of school cooperative climate and school competitive climate in the development process of the social and emotional skills of underprivileged-background students.