Authors
Background
Students at risk for early school dropout show more oppositional behavior toward their teachers. This is problematic, as uncooperative and hostile behaviors impair their relationships with their teachers, and thus may further increase the risk of academic failure. Positive teacher-student relationships, however, can be a protective factor against academic failure and school dropout of at-risk students.
Moment-to-moment interactions between teachers and students can be seen as building blocks of relationships. Earlier research has shown that at-risk students do not show defiant behavior in interaction with all teachers. To this end, we examined dyadic teacher-student interactions in the context of positive relationships to gain more insight into how teachers can build and maintain positive and cooperative relationships with at-risk students.
According to the interpersonal theory, behavior in interaction can be described on two, connected, dimensions: communion (i.e., ranging from oppositional to cooperative behavior) and agency (ranging from submissive to dominant behavior). Often, when someone increases their communion toward the other, the other becomes more friendly too, whereas when someone increases their agency the other will become more submissive. The present study described what interpersonal behavior of both teachers and at-risk students in terms of agency and communion looked like in the context of positive teacher-student relationships (RQ1). And it examined the associations between teacher and student behavior, with a specific focus on how teachers elicit cooperative student behavior (RQ2).
Method
Participants were 83 secondary school students (Mage = 13.65; 33 females) and their 50 favorite teachers (Mage = 39.86; 24 females). Some students selected the same favorite teacher, this was controlled for in the analysis.
Short mentoring sessions (around 10 minutes) between the student and their favorite teacher were videotaped and coded in hindsight using continuous assessment of interpersonal dynamics. This approach captures interpersonal behavior as it unfolds over time and simultaneously codes interpersonal agency and communion. Yet both dimensions receive separate scores. We computed various descriptive statistics (e.g., mean levels), as well as correlations (over time) between the two dimensions within-person, within-dyad, and between-dyads.
Results
The following results are only a very small selection of our findings.
RQ1: In general, teachers and students showed cooperative behavior, and teachers showed more agency (i.e., providing structure/helping students) than students. Teachers varied in their interpersonal communion more than students did, while students varied more in their agency.
RQ2: When teachers became more friendly (i.e., an increase in communion), students also became more friendly and cooperative. When teachers increased their agency, students became more submissive. An increase in teachers’ agency led to a slight decrease in student communion and thus less cooperative student behavior.
Conclusion
Teachers’ interpersonal behavior is a crucial factor for students’ behavior. We found that cooperative student behavior was most likely when teachers showed cooperative behavior (i.e., high interpersonal communion), and when teachers loosened their leading role and the structure they imposed on the conversation frequently (i.e., low/variable interpersonal agency). Overall, the associations between teacher and student interpersonal behavior were highly dyad-specific, which points towards the usefulness of personalized interventions.
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