Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about school culture, plus tips on how to craft them for deeper insights. You can quickly build and customize these surveys in seconds with Specific.
Best open-ended questions for a teacher survey about school culture
Open-ended questions are your ticket to genuinely understanding what teachers think and feel. Why? Because they let people share their real experiences, not just tick boxes. You get richer stories, more honesty, and often uncover issues or hopes you’d never expect—which helps you make smarter decisions about your school’s culture. Teachers, like most people, love when their individual voice gets heard instead of being pushed into someone else's categories. These questions are especially useful at the start of a survey or when you want detailed feedback to guide future improvements. Recent research shows that open-ended survey questions can reveal unanticipated insights, foster participant engagement, and avoid introducing designer bias [1].
What aspects of our school culture make you most proud to work here?
How would you describe the level of collaboration among teachers at our school?
Can you share a story or example that captures the spirit of our school community?
What challenges do you face when trying to promote a positive school culture?
In what ways do you think our school might better support teachers in fostering a healthy environment?
How does communication between staff, administration, and teachers impact the culture here?
What is one change you believe would most improve our school's culture?
How well do you feel your values align with the school’s values?
Can you describe a time when you felt especially supported by the school leadership?
Is there anything about our school’s culture you wish more people recognized or understood?
Open-ended questions like these not only bring out deeper perspectives but also allow teachers to raise points no one on the admin team may have thought about. And as studies show, participants are often more engaged and honest when answering open-ended questions [2].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher survey about school culture
Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you want to quickly quantify opinions or kick off a topic before a deeper dive. They're ideal at survey midpoints, especially if you want to track cultural trends over time or get quick agreement/disagreement before probing for details. Teachers don’t always have time to type out long answers, so these help you spot patterns and start valuable conversations.
Question: How would you rate the overall sense of community among staff at our school?
Very strong
Somewhat strong
Neutral
Somewhat weak
Very weak
Question: Which factor most positively influences our school culture?
Leadership
Staff collaboration
Student engagement
Professional development
Other
Question: Do you feel comfortable providing honest feedback about school matters?
Always
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
When to follow up with "why?" It’s best to ask "why" after multiple-choice questions when you want to understand the reason behind the responses—especially for strong opinions (positive or negative). Example: If a teacher says “Somewhat weak” for sense of community, asking, “Why do you feel that way?” lets them explain their reasoning, turning a flat answer into actionable insight.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use "Other" when you realize your list of options may not fully capture everyone’s experience. Some teachers see things you haven’t thought of. If someone chooses "Other," a follow-up question like “Can you describe what you had in mind?” can uncover unexpected insights and unique opportunities you’d otherwise miss.
Should you include an NPS question for teacher surveys about school culture?
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a simple yet revealing way to measure overall sentiment. For teachers, it gauges their likelihood to recommend your school as a great place to work or teach, summing up their feelings about school culture in a single number. You ask: “How likely are you to recommend our school as a positive workplace to a fellow teacher?” and follow up with a “why” question to get the story behind the score. Using NPS in school culture surveys helps you benchmark overall satisfaction and spot loyalty trends over time. You can instantly generate a teacher NPS survey about school culture that includes best-practice follow-ups.
The power of follow-up questions
The real magic happens when you ask follow-up questions naturally, in the flow of the conversation. That’s why Specific’s automated follow-up questions work so well—they dig deeper based on what someone just said. Our AI-powered interviews ask the kind of clarifying, “tell me more” style questions that skilled human interviewers use. This saves you time (no more chasing teachers via email) and helps you collect richer, clearer stories, fast. You can learn more about this feature in our automatic AI follow-up questions overview.
Teacher: “I don’t always feel comfortable sharing ideas in meetings.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share what makes it challenging to share your ideas during meetings?”
Teacher: “There's not enough collaboration.”
AI follow-up: “Can you give an example of when you felt collaboration was lacking?”
How many follow-ups to ask? In practice, 2–3 follow-up questions are usually enough to clarify and enrich an answer, while keeping the experience smooth. If you have what you need sooner, automatically moving to the next question is a smart move—Specific offers settings to control this.
This makes it a conversational survey: Each response drives the next step, so teachers feel truly heard. That’s what makes Specific’s conversational surveys more human and engaging—especially compared to old-school survey forms.
AI makes response analysis easy: Tools like Specific's AI survey response analysis mean that, even with lots of open-ended text, you can instantly chat about key themes and spot trends without manual coding or sifting through text. More on this in our guide on how to analyze teacher survey responses about school culture.
Most teams haven’t seen what AI-powered automated follow-ups can achieve. I recommend you generate a survey for teacher feedback about school culture and see the experience first-hand.
How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other AI to write survey questions about school culture
If you want ChatGPT or another AI to brainstorm strong questions for your teacher culture survey, use this approach for maximum relevance:
Start broad:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for teacher survey about school culture.
AI works best when you give it more specifics—like what you hope to achieve or your unique context:
I’m the principal at a middle school looking to improve collaboration among teachers and understand morale. Suggest 10 open-ended survey questions to capture teachers’ honest experiences and surface improvement areas.
Next, sort and refine your results to find patterns:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see the themes, you can dig deeper where it matters most:
Generate 10 questions for categories such as staff collaboration and leadership support.
This method ensures your questions match your goals, while leveraging AI’s strength for variety and specificity.
What makes a conversational survey different?
Traditional surveys feel like filling out static forms—click, select, next. It’s not great for building trust or digging beneath surface-level answers. An AI survey generator flips the script by making every survey feel like an interview: each question adapts, probing when needed and breezing through when not. That’s how Specific designs its surveys: the AI not only asks but listens, adds smart follow-ups, and learns with each answer.
Manual surveys | AI-generated surveys |
|---|---|
Manual form building | Instant creation from a prompt |
Fixed questions | Dynamically adapts + asks follow-ups |
No real-time feedback | Instant “why?” and clarifiers |
Time-consuming analysis of text | AI summarizes and highlights key themes in moments |
Feels like paperwork | Feels like a genuine conversation |
Why use AI for teacher surveys? Because AI-powered surveys can instantly adapt, uncover deeper stories, and analyze results without you lifting a finger. When you see an AI survey example in action—especially a conversational one built for teachers about school culture—the difference is clear: you gather more honest, actionable feedback.
Specific leads the way with AI conversational surveys. The experience is smooth, engaging, and highly effective for both you and your teachers. If you want a step-by-step guide to creating a teacher survey about school culture, check out our deep-dive on how to create a teacher survey about school culture.
See this school culture survey example now
Jump in to see how a well-crafted conversational survey can spark real, actionable insights from teachers—no manual follow-up, fast analysis, and a conversational experience that participants love. Start now to make every teacher’s feedback count and drive lasting cultural improvements.