Open Collections

Whitehead, Jenna

University of British Columbia

For decades, research has documented the importance of caring student-teacher relationships in fostering students’ healthy development. Less attention has been paid, however, to investigating specific qualities of caring student-teacher relationships from the perspective of early adolescents in middle school. Three studies were conducted to address this gap. Study 1 presents the development and validation of the Caring Student-Teacher Relationship (CSTR) scale. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on data from 222 sixth and seventh grade students and a two-factor solution was found: Teacher Support and Attunement and Caring Teacher Qualities. Analyses revealed that the two factors were related in expected directions to existing measures of teacher support, to student and teacher-rated student adjustment, and to teachers’ reports of mindfulness and burnout. Study 2 explored 199 sixth and seventh grade students’ written responses to the question “What are three things that teachers do to show they care?” via a qualitative content analysis. Findings revealed 19 themes; 18 of which were grouped into one of three thematic categories associated with mindful teaching: Calm, Clear, and Kind, and one General Teaching theme. Most students’ responses comprised Kind and Clear themes. Girls’ responses were more likely to include Clear themes compared to boys. Study 3 investigated the congruence of student and teacher reports of their dyadic relationship and the relation of this congruence to students’ school functioning, prosociality, and well-being. A cluster analysis of 219 sixth and seventh graders and their teachers produced four profiles based on the consistency between students’ and teachers’ perceptions of their relationship quality: Congruent–Negative, Congruent–Positive, Incongruent–Student Positive/Teacher Negative, Incongruent–Student Negative/Teacher Positive. Students in the Congruent-Positive group were rated highest on both self- and teacher-reported dimensions of prosociality in contrast to students in other groups. Moreover, groups in which students rated the student-teacher relationship positive regardless of teachers’ ratings of the relationship were highest on school and well-being dimensions. Findings from this research has implications for understanding the nature of student-teacher relationships in early adolescence, particularly in middle school, and the association of these relationships with students’ overall functioning.

Text

2021-10-06

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/79912

Human Development, Learning, and Culture

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/