Enhancing the connections between students and teachers to create a positive learning
environment and provide necessary support for success.
Dasha Bunks
Liberty University
PSYC 775 - Teaching of Psychology
Dr. Winn
2022
Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting
implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students'
relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who
have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of
achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.
Picture a student who feels a strong personal connection to her teacher, talks with her teacher
frequently, and receives more constructive guidance and praise rather than just criticism from her
teacher. The student is likely to trust her teacher more, show more engagement in learning, behave
better in class and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw
students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn (assuming that the content
material of the class is engaging, age-appropriate and well matched to the student's skills).
High quality academic instruction
High quality academic instruction is designed to be appropriate to students' educational levels. It
also creates opportunity for thinking and analysis, uses feedback effectively to guide students' thinking,
and extends students' prior knowledge.
Teachers who foster positive relationships with their students create classroom environments
more conducive to learning and meet students' developmental, emotional and academic needs. Here
are some concrete examples of closeness between a teacher and a student:
A high school student chooses to share the news that he recently got a part in a
community play with his teacher because he knows that his teacher will show genuine interest in his
success.
A fourth grade boy who is struggling in math shows comfort in admitting to his teacher
that he needs help with multiplying and dividing fractions even if most of the students in the class have
moved beyond this work.
A middle school girl experiences bullying from other students and approaches her social
studies teacher to discuss it because she trusts that the teacher will listen and help without making her
feel socially inept.
Positive teacher-student relationships contribute to school adjustment and academic and
social performance
Positive teacher-student relationships — evidenced by teachers' reports of low conflict, a high
degree of closeness and support, and little dependency — have been shown to support students'
adjustment to school, contribute to their social skills, promote academic performance and foster
students' resiliency in academic performance (Battistich, Schaps, & Wilson, 2004; Birch & Ladd, 1997;
Curby, Rimm-Kaufman, & Ponitz, 2009; Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Rudasill, Reio,
Stipanovic, & Taylor, 2010).
Teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were
less likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative and more engaged in learning
(Birch & Ladd, 1997; Decker, Dona, & Christenson, 2007; Klem & Connell, 2004). Teachers who use more
learner-centered practices (i.e., practices that show sensitivity to individual differences among students,
include students in the decision-making, and acknowledge students' developmental, personal and
relational needs) produced greater motivation in their students than those who used fewer of such
practices (Daniels & Perry, 2003).
Students who attended math classrooms with higher emotional support reported increased
engagement in mathematics learning. For instance, fifth graders said they were willing to exert more
effort to understand the math lesson. They enjoyed thinking about and solving problems in math and
were more willing to help peers learn new concepts (Rimm-Kaufman, Baroody, Larsen, Curby, & Abry,
2014). Among kindergarteners, students reported liking school more and experiencing less loneliness if
they had a close relationship with their teachers. Further, kindergarteners with better teacher-student
relationships showed better performance on measures of early academic skills (Birch & Ladd, 1997).
The quality of early teacher-student relationships has a long-lasting impact. Specifically, students
who had more conflict with their teachers or showed more dependency toward their teachers in
kindergarten also had lower academic achievement (as reflected in mathematics and language arts
grades) and more behavioral problems (e.g., poorer work habits, more discipline problems) through the
eighth grade. These findings were greater for boys than for girls (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). Further work
indicates that kindergarten children with more closeness and less conflict with teachers developed
better social skills as they approached the middle school years than kindergarten children with more
conflictual relationships experiences in the past (Berry & O'Connor, 2009). A recent study examining
student-teacher relationships throughout elementary school (first through fifth grade) found that
teacher-student closeness linked to gains in reading achievement, while teacher-student conflict related
to lower levels of reading achievement (McCormick & O'Connor, 2014).
Teachers who have negative relationships with a student show evidence of frustration,
irritability and anger toward that student. Teachers might display their negativity through snide and
sarcastic comments toward the student or describe the feeling that they are always struggling or in
conflict with a particular student. Often, teachers will describe a specific student as "one who exhausts
them" or "a student who leaves them feeling drained and burned out."
Negative teacher-student relationships can amplify when teachers show irritability and anger
toward several or many of the students in the classroom. In these types of classrooms, teachers may
find themselves resorting to yelling and harsh punitive control. Teacher-student communications may
appear sarcastic or disrespectful. Student victimization or bullying may be common occurrences in such
negative classrooms (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2006).
Negative teacher-student relationships are stressful for both teachers and students (Jennings &
Greenberg, 2009; Lisonbee, Mize, Payne, & Granger, 2008) and can be detrimental to students'
academic and social-emotional development (McCormick & O'Connor, 2014; O'Connor, Collins, &
Supplee, 2012).
Know your students
Knowing a student's interests can help you create examples to match those interests.
If a student who loves basketball comes to you with a question about a math problem,
you might respond to her with a problem involving basketball.
If a student who speaks Spanish at home comes to you with a question about English
vocabulary, you might answer his question and then ask him what the word is in Spanish and how he'd
use it in a sentence. This type of specific responding shows that you care about your students as people
and that you are aware of their unique strengths (i.e., fluency in another language).
Knowing a student's temperament can help you construct appropriate learning opportunities.
If a girl in your class is particularly distractible, you can support her efforts to
concentrate by offering her a quieter area in which to work.
If a boy in your classroom is very shy, appears engaged but never raises his hand to ask
questions, you can assess his level of understanding of a concept in a one-on-one conversation at the
end of class.
Give students meaningful feedback
Notice the way that you give feedback to your students. If possible, watch a video of your own
teaching.
Are you giving students meaningful feedback that says you care about them and their
learning, or are you constantly telling your students to hurry?
In your conversations, are you focusing on what your students have accomplished or are
you concentrating your comments on what they have not yet mastered?
Does your body language, facial expression and tone of voice show your students that
you are interested in them as people too?
Are you telling them to do one thing, yet you model quite different behavior? For
example, are you telling your students to listen to each other, but then look bored when one of them
talks to the class? Be sure that the feedback you give to your students conveys the message that you are
supporting their learning and that you care about them.
Are you paying more attention to some students than to others?
In this clip, a third grade teacher is monitoring and assisting her students during an independent
reading activity. She kneels down next to one of her students and asks him questions to determine if he
comprehends the story. The teacher positions herself in close proximity to the student and speaks to
him with a calm and respectful tone of voice, which conveys the message that she is here to support
him.
Create a positive classroom climate
Be sure to allow time for your students to link the concepts and skills they are learning to their
own experiences. Build fun into the things you do in your classroom. Plan activities that create a sense
of community so that your students have an opportunity to see the connections between what they
already know and the new things they are learning, as well as have the time to enjoy being with you and
the other students. Make sure to provide social and emotional support and set high expectations for
learning.
Be respectful and sensitive to adolescents
Supportive teacher-student relationships are just as important to middle and high school
students as they are to elementary students. Positive relationships encourage students' motivation and
engagement in learning. Older students need to feel that their teachers respect their opinions and
interests just as much as younger students do. Even in situations where adolescents do not appear to
care about what teachers do or say, teacher actions and words do matter and may even have long term
positive (or negative) consequences.
Develop positive discourse with students with challenging behavior
Think about what you say to the difficult students in your classroom. Are you constantly
bombarding your more challenging students with requests to do something? Do you find yourself
constantly asking students to stop doing what they are doing? No one likes being badgered and
pestered, and your students are no exception.
Try to find a time or place when you can have positive discussion with the problem student.
Notice and mention the positive behaviors they exhibit.
Remind yourself that even if a challenging student appears unresponsive to your requests, she is
hearing the messages that you are giving her. Her responses may not change her immediate
behavior but may matter in the long term.
Make extra effort to develop and sustain relationships with difficult students
Difficult students require more energy on your part. For example, you may need to spend time
with them individually to get to know them better — to understand their interests as well as what
motivates them. This will not only allow you to tailor your instruction to their interests and motivation,
but the time spent will also allow them to develop trust in you. Recent research on high school students
who have frequent and intense discipline problems shows that when adolescents perceive their
teachers are trustworthy people, they show less defiant behavior (Gregory & Ripski, 2008). Persistent
teacher-student conflict throughout the elementary years increases the likelihood that children will
exhibit negative externalizing behaviors (O'Connor et al., 2012), so it is important for teachers to build
close relationships at an early age with children at-risk for behavioral issues.
References
Allen, K. P. (2010). Classroom management, bullying, and teacher practices. The Professional
Educator, 34(1), 1-15.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Volume 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Brown, J. L., Jones, S., LaRusso, M. D., & Aber, J. L. (2010). Improving classroom quality: Teacher
influences and experimental impacts of the 4Rs program. Journal of Educational Psychology,102(1), 153-
167.
Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools
for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Cassidy, J. & Asher, S.R. (1992). Loneliness and peer relations in young children. Child
Development, 63, 350-365.
Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (2010). Effects of a multiyear social-emotional
learning program: The role of student and school characteristics. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 78(2), 156-168.
Croninger, R. G., & Lee, V. E. (2001). Social capital and dropping out of high school: Benefits to
at-risk students of teachers' support and guidance. Teacher College Record, 103(4), 548-581.
