Leadership Article

Expert Advice for Building Strong Teacher-Student Relationships

By EducationHQ News Team
Published September 11, 2020

Strong and positive teacher-student relationships are more important than ever this year.

With Victorian students still studying from home, one expert in educational psychology has offered advice for teachers on maintaining positive relationships with students, whether they are attending school or learning from home.

The University of New South Wales’ Dr Rebecca Collie said to EducationHQ that it is not yet well understood how remote learning will affect student-teacher relationships.

“We don't really know the long-term effects and we don't know what's going to happen in the long-term for students who have been remote learning for significant parts of this year,” Collie said.

“But, you know, face to face relationships are really important and most of the research that's looked at these teacher-student relationships has focused on face to face relationships. So we know it's important.”

Collie has extensively researched the impact of positive and negative teacher-student relationships.

One study released last year asked secondary students to rate their relationships with five of their teachers.

“What we found with these students is that the number of positive to negative relationships was linked with their changes in academic engagement over an academic year," Collie said.

“And so [we found that] when students had more positive relationships than negative relationships … this was associated with gains in engagement.

“And we looked at three types of engagement: we looked at their class participation, so how much they actually got involved in the classroom; we looked at their school enjoyment; and we looked at their academic aspirations, what are their intentions for their education going forward, do they intend to continue studying?

“What was really interesting about the findings is that the addition of every extra positive relationship seemed to have a cumulative yield on their engagement. So the more positive relationships they had compared with negative, the higher their engagement was over the course of the year.”

Students having good relationships with their teachers and their peers has also been linked to a range of other positive outcomes, including social development and emotional maturity.

Collie said that there are a few key strategies that teachers can employ to build strong relationships.

One of these strategies is building relationships directly with students.

“So this is really taking the time to interact with students. And so in the classroom teachers can do that, they can make sure they are spending time interacting with each student over the course of a day or a week.

“When it comes to remote learning, this may be by having breakout rooms in video conferencing with a handful of students, so that teachers can really check in and see how the students are coping and going with their work over the course of a week. It's a lot harder on video conferencing though, to really have the time to connect individually with students.”

Also important is what Collie described as “promoting students’ ownership and self-initiation”.

“When students have a sense of ownership in their learning, they're more motivated, they're more engaged, and they tend to do better as well,” she explained.

“And so for teachers, this can involve actions like providing a rationale for why students need to undertake a certain task, explaining to students the value in different activities that need to be done, listening and acknowledging students' perspectives.

“And again, that shows students that teachers are caring and they're interested in what the students have to say. And then inviting input in decision making whenever it's possible and feasible, because this again helps to build that ownership.”

It is also important for teachers to clearly explain goals and expectations to students, Collie said.