A One-with-Many Approach to Understanding Reciprocity in the Student-Teacher Relationship

Positive and close student-teacher relationships are known to support students’ social, emotional, and academic development. The literature, however, largely focusses on teachers’ perspectives of relationship quality, with relatively few studies examining the level of agreement between students’ and teachers’ perceptions. In this presentation, I will present findings from a study which explored the agreement between students’ and teachers’ perceptions of their dyadic relationship, and how these perceptions are related to students’ literacy and maths self-concept. Using data from Finnish primary school students and their teachers, in grades 3 and 4, agreement of closeness and conflict in the relationship was examined using a type of dyadic analysis, specifically the One-with-Many model. Through this analysis it was possible to assess both dyadic (whether there is agreement within individual student-teacher dyads) and generalised reciprocity (whether teachers’ overall views of relationship quality align with how they are generally perceived by their group of students). The results showed significant dyadic reciprocity, agreement, in both grades for closeness and conflict, while generalised reciprocity in perceptions of conflict was found only in grade 4. Additionally, higher students’ self-concept in literacy, but not in maths, was associated with higher closeness and less conflict from both perspectives. The findings highlight the value of considering both student and teacher perspectives when examining social relationships in the classroom, and their association with students’ academic self-perceptions.

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