The strategies that Main Street Academix staff implements to improve school climate are based on well-known theories and research in social psychology.

The four theories and research models described here provide the foundation for much of our work. Combined with our own insights on a continuum of respectful behaviors and methods of increasing teacher efficacy, they can be used by students and faculty at every school to devise new strategies to improve school climate. We’ve seen them work again and again!

Self-fulfilling Prophecy
(Rosenthal, 1966, Psychological Reports, 19, 115-118)

Super-Ordinate Goals
(Sherif, 1956, Scientific American,195, 5)

Role Theory
(Jane Elliott’s documentary A Class Divided, & Zimbardo’s Prison Simulation Research, in Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, Naval Research Review, 9/1973)

Learned Helplessness
(Seligman, Helplessness: On depression, development, and death, 1975)