Teacher-Student Relationships

The key elements of a quality relationship between teachers and students are composed of four broad factors. The first factor concerns features of the individuals involved in the relationship (e.g., gender, age, temperament, self-perceptions). The second component involves each individual's understanding of the relationship (e.g., how teachers and students view their own roles and the role of the other in this dyadic system). A third salient component includes the processes through which the two participants exchange information. Information exchange establishes and maintains a feedback loop between teacher and student, providing both individuals with verbal and nonverbal cues about the status and needs of each partner. The fourth component includes external factors that influence both teachers and students, including school-level variables such as discipline policies, schoolwide and classroom climate, class size, and organization of the school day.

It is important to note that although both participants in teacher-student relationships influence the quality of the relationship they form, the degree of responsibility for shared interactions is asymmetrical. The bulk of the responsibility for determining the quality of the relationship falls on the teacher in the early elementary school years; however, there is a shift toward shared responsibility as the child moves to middle and high school.

Research indicates two overlapping but distinct aspects of the teacher-student relationship: conflict and closeness. Although both aspects have been related to children's social and academic development, there are indications that conflict in relationships is more closely associated with child outcomes than is closeness. In early elementary school, teachers’ reports of the quality of their relationships with students is relatively high (i.e., marked by low levels of conflict and high levels of closeness). Initial research has shown a trend toward relationships becoming less intense (in both conflict and closeness) as children move from preschool through the early elementary school grades. Furthermore, relationships that children develop with different teachers across their early school experiences are moderately stable, but demonstrate enough variability to indicate that each new teacher represents a new relational opportunity for students.

There is a clear association between the quality of the relationship and students’ concurrent and future behavior, and academic achievement. Specifically, high closeness/low conflict teacher-student relationships in preschool and early elementary school are linked with positive peer relationships, higher levels of social competence, and better performance on tests of academic skills. This association between relational quality and children's outcomes is unique; that is, it is independent of the teacher's view of children's behavior problems, or children's cognitive ability, or prior levels of children's skills. Although the bulk of research on teacher-student relationships has been conducted with early elementary-age children, middle school students have also been shown to benefit from close, supportive relationships with teachers. Less research has been conducted on high school students, but it has been suggested that supportive relationships with teachers may be particularly salient for students at transition points, such as the transition from elementary to middle school or middle to high school. Supportive relationships between teachers and older [Page 559]students may be key features of the processes that link middle and high school students to the goals and benefits of schooling.

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