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Bridges and Barriers: Adolescent Perceptions of Student-Teacher Relationships

January 2013
Urban Education 48(1):9-43

DOI:10.1177/0042085912451585

Authors:

Christy Galletta Horner

Bowling Green State University

Tanner LeBaron Wallace

University of Pittsburgh

In urban secondary schools where under preparation and dropping out are real world concerns, students understand that their relationships with teachers affect their learning. Using descriptive coding and thematic analysis of focus group data, we explore adolescents’ perceptions of the bridges that foster and the barriers that inhibit supportive relationships with teachers, and the boundary expectations that function as both. The characteristics of supportive student–teacher relationships identified by youth participants suggest a number of teacher practices capable of meeting adolescents’ developmental needs and, as such, are likely to positively influence adolescents’ developmental and academic trajectories.

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University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Rebecca Munnell McHugh, Psychology in Education, University of Pittsburgh,

5928 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Email: ram71@pitt.edu

Bridges and Barriers:

Adolescent Perceptions

of Student–Teacher

Relationships

Rebecca Munnell McHugh

Christy Galletta Horner

, Jason B. Colditz

, and

Tanner LeBaron Wallace

Abstract

In urban secondary schools where underpreparation and dropping out

are real world concerns, students understand that their relationships with

teachers affect their learning. Using descriptive coding and thematic analysis

of focus group data, we explore adolescents’ perceptions of the bridges that

foster and the barriers that inhibit supportive relationships with teachers,

and the boundary expectations that function as both. The characteristics

of supportive student–teacher relationships identified by youth participants

suggest a number of teacher practices capable of meeting adolescents’

developmental needs and, as such, are likely to positively influence adoles-

cents’ developmental and academic trajectories.

Keywords

adolescents, student–teacher relationships, high school, relatedness, focus

group

Articles

10 Urban Education 48(1)

Vulnerable youth, both those disadvantaged due to historical (e.g., racial and

ethnic minorities) and socioeconomic (e.g., those from low income, low

parental education households) factors, face a number of economic and

sociopolitical risk factors, such as underfunded schools and the exclusion of

their families from decision-making processes related to educational quality

(Ladson-Billings, 2006). Ultimately, these risks can culminate in lower aca-

demic achievement and increase risk for dropping out (Orfield, Losen, Wald,

& Swanson, 2004). Dropping out of high school is theoretically understood

to be a process rather than a discrete event (Finn, 1989; Hernandez Jozefowicz-

Simbeni, 2008).

In an attempt to understand the multiple processes that can lead to school

withdrawal or failure, many researchers have sought to understand the under-

lying processes that lead up to early school leaving (Finn & Owings, 2006).

Feelings of not fitting in can lead to distraction (Crosnoe, 2011); this distrac-

tion can lead to disengagement from school-based tasks (Connell & Wellborn,

1991). On the other hand, identification with school, fostered through sus-

tained and multilevel participation, can connect youth to school in ways that

are thought to prevent early school leaving (Finn, 1989). Therefore, prevent-

ing early school leaving and encouraging positive youth outcomes appears to

depend on both positive relationships with school-based peers and adults and

a commitment to school (for intervention evidence of such see Catalano,

Haggerty, Oesterle, Fleming, & Hawkins, 2004).

Further evidence of these two separate school connection components,

relationships with teachers and participation/identification with school, is

found through recent factor analytic investigations of school connection mea-

sures. For example, McNeely (2005) found school connectedness to be com-

prised of two distinct factors—perceptions of the quality of teacher

relationships and a more general sense of school belonging. When tested, the

predictive power of the teacher relationships factor was a significantly stron-

ger predictor of youth outcomes (McNeely, 2005).

Additional support for the critical importance of student–teacher relation-

ships to subsequent academic achievement is derived from a variety of

sources. For example, analyzing National Educational Longitudinal Study

data, Wimberly (2002) determined three school relationship characteristics—

School Personnel Expectations, Teachers Talking with Students, and

Extracurricular Participation—were particularly salient factors for African

American students relative to later educational achievement. Likewise, using

a comprehensive change model to examine a dataset of approximately

600,000 students in Texas public schools, Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain (2005)

McHugh et al. 11

determined a one standard deviation increase in teacher quality had signifi-

cant effects on student achievement in both reading and mathematics.

We know that relationships matter, but it is also important to critically

examine the romanticized notion of “supportive relationships.” For example,

distinctions between aesthetic care, sentimental phrases with little to no

action, and authentic care, actions that incorporate genuine consideration of

the person being cared for and their capacities, are critical (Toshalis, 2011;

Valenzuela, 1999). Current theories and measures for understanding teacher

relationships tend to focus on the responsiveness of a teacher during a single

observational period (see for example Hamre & Pianta, 2010). These data

provide some important information of student–teacher relationships, but

may lack an understanding of the history and context within the specific

classroom. Moreover, these adult-centric observational approaches overlook

adolescents’ unique and personal experience of school.

In order to guide educators on how to translate the slogan “relationships

matter” into preservice training, professional development and/or the evalua-

tion of effective teaching, a research-based theory of the interaction-specific

processes is needed. Fortunately, previous literature provides a set of thought-

ful qualitative inquiries reviewed below. The foundation for such work

focuses on three key components of a high school experience: instruction,

classroom management, and postgraduation planning.

This study aims to contribute to this important line of research by iden-

tifying in our data those specific processes which adolescents report foster

positive student–teacher relationships, referred to as bridges, as well as

those processes which hinder the development of such relationships,

referred to as barriers. By examining previous works regarding perceived

support among ethnically diverse urban youth (Ozer, Wolf, & Kong, 2008),

culturally responsive classroom management (Milner & Tenore, 2010), and

school networks for support and guidance (Farmer-Hinton, 2008), we link

our findings to previous research. Additionally, we use self-determination

theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000), to explain why certain

teacher practices are identified by youth as particularly powerful. Self-

determination theory highlights the role of needs fulfillment within rela-

tionships as well as the ongoing self-evaluative processes likely to determine

whether a positive student–teacher relationship will translate into positive

outcomes, such as academic achievement, for a student. In light of our find-

ings and the confirmation and extension of previous findings provided, we

offer action-oriented suggestions for increasing the quality of student–

teacher relationships.

12 Urban Education 48(1)

Engagement Processes Activated

Through Interpersonal Structures

All humans have a fundamental drive to satisfy the basic need to belong

through persistent, positive, caring relationships (Baumeister & Leary,

1995). Contextual conditions outside the domain of school such as family

economic risk or neighborhood risk can influence an adolescent’s ability to

“hang in” and develop school-based relationships able to satisfy belonging

and relatedness needs (Connell, Halpem-Fisher, Clifford, Crichlow, &

Usinger, 1995). For some youth, however, simply hanging in there may not

be enough.

Youth are continually assessing how they believe others in their environ-

ment to perceive them, and in some cases, school-based adults intensify what

Spencer (1999, 2006) describes as the patterns of interpretations of these self-

appraisals, which link to experienced stress on the part of the adolescent.

Within classrooms, teachers form expectations of their students often focused

on anticipated achievement (Brophy, 1983; Davis, 2003). Differential teacher

expectations can have negative consequences for students for the fact that

students’ awareness of these differentials result in varying student behavior

(Brattesani, Weinstein, & Marshall, 1984; Kuklinski & Weinstein, 2000;

Weinstein, 1983).

Though many teacher assessments may be both appropriate and accurate

(Brophy, 1983), it remains that many may not be. These faulty expectations

may instead be based on faulty assessments, counterproductive interaction

patterns that the student learned from previous bad relationships with teach-

ers (Davis, 2006), or even be influenced by race or ethnicity (McKown &

Weinstein, 2008). Whatever their origin, and to an extent even their accuracy,

when these expectations result in the teacher treating the students differently,

it can have unfortunate consequences, such as the increased risk of lowered

achievement of those students who do not receive the support that they per-

ceive that their peers receive, particularly when the students themselves are

attuned to these differences in treatment (Brattesani et al., 1984; Kuklinski &

Weinstein, 2000; McKown & Weinstein, 2008).

In the classroom, a student’s relationship with the teacher can foster aca-

demic value systems, sustain long-term engagement, and inform enduring

self-appraisals the student will form of him or herself as learner (Connell &

Wellborn, 1991; Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991). Students experi-

encing anxiety, apprehension or alienation as a result of perceived negativity

of classroom climate or negative student–teacher relationships may be dis-

couraged from any subsequent attempts to form interpersonal bonds with the

McHugh et al. 13

teacher (Bernstein-Yamashiro, 2004) or future academic tasks (Connell

et al., 1995).

Self-Determination Theory

By offering a roadmap to the interplay between some of the major human

drives fulfilled through relationships and cognitive/affective processes, self-

determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) provides a model of how an

individual student’s reading of the relational climate of a classroom can lead

a student to engage, disengage, or reengage in the learning context. The basic

needs component of self-determination theory suggests that humans are

driven to satiate three innate needs; these are the need for (a) autonomy, or a

sense of personal control and direction; (b) competence, or a sense of effi-

cacy within a context; and (c) relatedness, or quality interpersonal connec-

tion (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Reeve, 2012; Ryan & Deci, 2000). According to

basic needs theory, different levels of engagement across an environment are

due to the fact that psychological and developmental needs are fulfilled to

varying degrees, depending upon context-specific factors. In a classroom, for

example, students disengage or engage in a manner intended to prompt a

change within the environment.

In the context of student–teacher relationship formation, a student deter-

mines whether or not to continue to invest in a relationship with a teacher

based on these evaluations. For example, a student–teacher relationship

which provides a student access to resources needed to successfully reach

academic goals, and thus supports feelings of competence, would likely be

pursued. On the other hand, a relationship in which feelings of incompetence

are communicated would likely be dissolved. By considering the drive to

form and sustain interpersonal connections to others within a shared context,

we can begin to understand how a student decides whether to engage with or

disengage from a classroom environment. Therefore, we focus on the con-

cept of relatedness.

The basic human need to form interpersonal connections. Feelings of related-

ness within a given environment have tremendous potential to impact an indi-

vidual’s response to that environment. The concept of relatedness describes

an interpersonal connection within a given social context that is perceived as

secure and satisfying (Deci et al., 1991). Relatedness, therefore, plays an

essential role in fostering engagement, especially when initial intrinsic, or

innate, motivation is low or lacking. When the need for relatedness is being

met through the student and teacher working together to construct a positive

student–teacher relationship, external motivations for the aspects of the

14 Urban Education 48(1)

learning context that are not intrinsically motivating can be internalized,

which in turn prompts engagement (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Niemiec & Ryan,

2009). This can foster task persistence, or continued engagement, and

increase the chance of reengagement in challenging academic tasks leading

to greater appreciation and even eventual internalization of external values

(Reeve, 2012; Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Empirical support for such claims comes from several recent studies. One

study examining these processes in two different samples, one consisting of

elementary students and the other of college students, found that both intrin-

sic motivation and internalized external motivation predicted academic

achievement (Burton, Lydon, D’Alessandro, & Koestner, 2006). Likewise,

relatedness between students and their teachers has been demonstrated to

predict students’ emotional and behavioral engagement (see for example

Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Additionally, the provision of emotional support,

a hallmark of feelings of relatedness, helps to sustain a students’ engagement

in the face of difficulties and adversity (Connell & Wellborn, 1991).

Conversely, when these needs are not being met, students may rightfully

resist environments perceived as negative; this behavior is often misunder-

stood by adults as defiance (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2006). Self-determination

theory recasts this rightful resistance as a behavioral communication of an

outstanding need. For example, a student may avoid attending or “ditch” a

class in which he or she feels “judged” or “stereotyped” by the teacher.

Careful attention to how students and teachers negotiate relationships through

a series of mutually determined understandings of the language they use, the

power each wields, and the behaviors they engage in (Davis, 2003; Meyer &

Turner, 2006) restructures student–teacher relationships as a collaboratively

constructed cooperative understanding. Each person in a relationship holds a

unique perspective and assessment of the relationship (Davis, 2003). Dyadic

interpersonal relationships constantly evolve as the two people negotiate and

renegotiate, evaluate and reevaluate their roles, their feelings toward each other,

and how they want their relationship to unfold (Davis, 2006; Kennedy, 2011).

Such relationships are naturally complex, and consist of many different features

and processes. Student–teacher relationships are no exception.

This Study

This study explores the manner in which urban youth make meaning of their

interactions with their teachers in both a concrete way, reflecting on their

lived experiences, and in a hypothetical, idealized way. Grounded within the

McHugh et al. 15

data and working from an emergent perspective, iterative data analysis

guided the development of our research questions:

• What do adolescents perceive as typical of their interactions with

their teachers?

• What do adolescents believe should and should not be typical of

their interpersonal interactions with their teachers?

• What do adolescents report their teachers should know more about,

and how do they feel that teachers should gather this information?

Design and Method

We collected focus group data (N = 13) at three urban sites across the United

States using an open-ended protocol. We employed descriptive coding to

explore emergent themes regarding student–teacher interactions to illumi-

nate a fuller understanding of adolescents’ perceptions of their classroom

experiences and their appreciations of these interactions.

Participants and Data Collection Procedures

Focus group data were collected in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (3 sites, 7 focus

groups), Minneapolis, Minnesota (1 site, 3 focus groups) and Los Angeles,

California (1 site, 3 focus groups). Researchers recruited study participants

(N = 78) for focus groups (average participants per group = 6) primarily

through after-school and community programs. In Pennsylvania, the protocol

was first developed with a convenience pilot sample of university freshmen

(n = 6); the second site was youth (n = 12) in a school-based after-school

program aimed at promoting youth leadership; the third site was youth (n = 25)

in a community-based program (as were the groups in both California, n = 22,

and Minnesota, n =13). The coinvestigators of the study had working rela-

tionships with the school-based and community-based recruitment sites, but

did not have prior relationships with youth participants. Program personnel

conducted the recruitment by mentioning the focus group opportunity to

program youth at a number of self-selected sites one week in advance to the

focus group date. During the focus groups, participants were compensated

with a catered meal. Parents of participants under the age of 18 provide con-

sent for their children to participate in the research prior to the focus group

sessions, and verbal assent was obtained before focus groups began in accor-

dance with the primary site’s IRB.

16 Urban Education 48(1)

Participants ranged in age from 14 to 20 years of age (M = 16.92,

SD = 1.30 years). The adolescents sampled represented a diverse racial com-

position, with 39.7% reporting as Black/African American, 23.1% as Asian/

Asian American, 16.7% as White/Euro-American, 3.9% as American Indian,

and 5.1% as multiracial (11.5% of participants did not report racial identifica-

tion information); additionally, 19.2% self-identified as Hispanic. Regarding

gender, 34.6% self-identified as female and 65.4% as male; though provided

the opportunity, no participants self-identified as transgender or nongendered.

Instead of asking youth to report parental occupation or income directly,

we used three items from the internationally validated Family Affluence

Scale (FAS II; Boyce, Torsheim, Currie, & Zambon, 2006). This decision

reflects our desire to avoid poor answering rates associated with traditional

socioeconomic status questions such as soliciting parental occupation

(Molcho, Gabhainn, & Kelleher, 2007; Wardle, Robb, & Johnson, 2002) and

maintain the possibility for cross-cultural comparison studies. An example

FAS II item includes, “How many cars, trucks, or vans does your family

own?” Our focus group sample’s mean score of 3.71 (SD = 1.29), on a scale

from zero to six, indicates a sample of high-midrange family affluence within

a global context. Considered in the context of U.S. standards, however, this

is a midaffluence sample.

Following a flexible protocol, facilitators guided youth participants

through two hands-on activities and multiple open-ended questions. The first

of these activities asked participants to indicate how much they felt unspeci-

fied adults in their lives knew about them by physically standing on a con-

tinuum line with the two ends representing the extremes knows nothing about

me and knows everything. Then, on the same continuum line, participants

indicated how much they felt the school-based adults in their lives knew. The

reasoning for where they stood at both times was discussed, as were any posi-

tion changes. Next, participants answered several open-ended questions

aimed at gathering information about their interpersonal relationships with

school-based adults. At one point, participants designated which aspects of

themselves (via manipulable cards reading “Likes & Dislikes,” “Goals,”

“Interests” and “Feelings” as prompts) they shared and did not share with

teachers and other school-based adults. Facilitators also asked the partici-

pants about times that they felt understood or misunderstood by their teach-

ers. Finally, moderators asked participants to pretend that they were teacher

educators, and to explain what teachers needed to know about them as stu-

dents and how to go about getting such information. Digital recorders cap-

tured the dialogue during all focus group sessions, and the resultant

de-identified transcripts constitute our qualitative data set.

McHugh et al. 17

Coding Procedures and Data Analyses

Using the NVivo 9 software package (for review, see Bazeley, 2010), we

descriptively micro-coded (units as small as phrases in a sentence, to full

conversations) data and examined how frequently different codes occurred

simultaneously to identify patterns and themes. Examining code co-occurrences

between our structural codes and our content codes provided a multifaceted

understanding of what the adolescent participants perceived as occurring in

their student–teacher interactions, as well as provided insight into the likely

implications of these relational assessments made by the adolescents. One

challenge to a focus group method, however, is that topics may be abandoned

and revisited multiple times within a relatively short span of time. Multiple

processes were frequently discussed simultaneously by participants because

(a) the participant reported experiencing them simultaneously; (b) the par-

ticipant believed them to be interrelated in regards to a specific experience;

or (c) the participant compared and contrasted dissimilar processes for

instructive purposes. As a result, codes occasionally overlapped in uninten-

tional ways. Therefore, to confirm the validity of our analyses, we manually

verified all relevant coding co-occurrences. This instance-by-instance verifi-

cation ensures that all counts of codes co-occurrences are accurate and did

not occur simply as artifacts of multiple sets of codes overlapping within the

same one-paragraph coding unit. Throughout this coding process, we utilized

three distinct types of codes: Mechanical codes, Conceptual codes, and

Structural codes (see appendix for an excerpt of our codebook). In the fol-

lowing paragraphs, we provide a brief overview of each distinct type of code.

Mechanical codes designated functional features of the focus group data

such as the specific speaker (moderator, participant, or other), the specific

actors referenced in any story or example provided by a youth participant (a

student–teacher interaction, a youth–parent interaction, etc.), and which par-

ticular protocol item participants were discussing (continuum of opinion,

identity cards, teacher educator, etc.). The mechanical codes facilitated data

reduction (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Namey, Guest, Thairu, & Johnson,

2008). By selecting only data which referred to teacher–student interactions

or regarded teacher-specific items of the protocol such as those reviewed

above, we generated a succinct, focused dataset with which to explore our

emergent research questions (Schutt, 2006).

Conceptual codes consisted of emergent and literature-based concepts.

We created conceptual codes through an iterative, cooperative process after

multiple readings of several transcripts (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2008).

These emergent codes allowed us to identify salient, repeated themes and

18 Urban Education 48(1)

concepts within the data, and form the heart of our analyses, as they represent

the content of the adolescents’ perceptions. Prior to independent coding, rat-

ers read and coded one transcript, compared the density of coding stripes

(Bazeley, 2010), and calculated interrater reliability scores (Viera & Garrett,

2005) in order to ensure coding fidelity (Namey et al., 2008). To ensure that

our codes were not redundant and had thematic unity, we examined the con-

vergence and divergence of conceptually similar codes, and collapsed mul-

tiple codes into one, or split one code into multiples, as necessary. We also

employed a few literature-generated codes specifically related to features of

supportive relationships.

The final type of codes used, Structural codes (Guest & McLellan, 2003;

Saldaña, 2009), designated when participants expressed hypothetical social

expectations or real observed social behaviors of teachers. This last set of

classifications became especially important when organizing data relevant to

the research questions. While conceptual codes explained the content of the

data, structural codes designated whether or not the adolescent’s story or

example described something that the teacher did or did not do. Additionally,

the structural codes reflected the adolescents’ judgments and values of the

story relayed, as to whether they felt it should or should not happen. Because

applying the structural codes involved a subjective process of interpreting

data, two or more researchers conducted this process collaboratively to reach

a consensus of interpretation.

This type of coding deliberately labeled the perceived effect of the interac-

tion on the closeness of the interpersonal relationship. As such, we were able

to explore the driving question in this coding process, “Did the interaction

bridge the two people to bring them closer together, or did it separate them or

create a barrier between closeness developing?” Finally, by examining the

thematic patterns identified, we gained a full understanding of the processes

that the participants related to us.

Findings and Discussion

During focus group sessions, participants drew on both personal experiences

as well as reported or witnessed experiences of others to describe real and

idealized student–teacher relationships. These stories of interaction took on

a range of forms—some were narrative stories of remembered events, while

others were broad, generalized descriptions of the nature of events or rela-

tionships in school. Students provided rich information about what they

wanted from teachers, both instructionally and interpersonally, and shared

important insights into how teachers may be better able to meet their students’

McHugh et al. 19

needs. This data gives us insight into both how students make sense of their

own and others’ interactions with teachers and also how interactional experi-

ences shape students’ generalizations about how “things are” between stu-

dents and teachers. Finally, our participants demonstrated engagement with

ongoing self-evaluative processes that provided assessments of the degree to

which school-based adults met their psychological and developmental needs.

Students spoke of the desire to collaboratively construct relationships with

teachers within distinct interpersonal boundaries. The need for teachers to

build appropriate and supportive relationships in which students felt known,

cared for, and understood existed simultaneously with the desire for teachers

to detect and uphold student-identified interpersonal boundaries. To make

sense of the complex features of student–teacher interpersonal relationships,

we will first discuss the student-reported bridges to supportive student–

teacher relationships. Next, we will address the barriers students described

that serve, with one notable exception, to stand in the way of positive student–

teacher relationships. In each section, student participants’ practical recom-

mendations regarding how to strengthen student–teacher relationships in

high school are discussed.

Building Bridges to Make Meaningful Connections

Bridges, one major thematic category in our data, consist of those interac-

tions which foster positive relationship development, or bring students and

teachers closer interpersonally. The most commonly discussed bridge was

effortful engagement, an instance in which one person actively and deliber-

ately engages another on an interpersonal level. A similar concept to

Gottman and DeClaires’s idea of bidding, “any single expression that says ‘I

want to feel connected to you’” (2001, p. 4), one student provided the

example of a time when she was struggling socially in school, and a teacher

noticed her distress:

[The teacher] noticed . . . it’s hard to notice from someone like me

because I don’t really like to talk about it . . . She didn’t know what

was going on . . . She thought I was just a good student in school and

not worrying about anything at home and stuff. When I told her my

problems, I felt like she knew me, because she told me . . . “It’s going

to be okay.” (Female CA1)

In this example, the student remembered the impression that her teacher

made when she took the time to pull her aside and ask how she was doing.

20 Urban Education 48(1)

When the student responded with her concerns, the teacher was encouraging

and supportive. The initial question prompted their relationship to deepen, as

the student replied that since they talked, she feels her teacher knows her.

Without the attempt to engage the student enacted by the teacher, their rela-

tionship may have remained more distant, the teacher believing this quiet

student to have no troubles while the student believing her teacher did not

genuinely care about her well-being.

Due to students’ frequent inability to perceive care without effort, teach-

ers’ effortful engagement provided students with information about teachers’

commitment to students’ well-being. These perceptions, then, informed the

student as to whether or not the teacher is fulfilling the student’s need for

relatedness. The fulfillment of these relatedness needs are theorized to affect

students’ assessment of whether or not to engage in the learning environment

(Connell & Wellborn, 1991).

Participants spoke clearly about the importance and value of teachers’

efforts to reach out and connect with them. One female student succinctly

stated, “The ones that do know you, care more.” Another adolescent stated

his experience with teachers:

Teachers are just interested in your learning . . . if you’re just sitting

there not doing nothing. Some teachers will just call to you and tell you,

“Hey, do your work.” But they’ll never ask you, “Oh, what’s wrong?

Are you feeling all right? Do you need something?” (Male, CA1)

This adolescent’s statement indicated when a teacher does not take the

time to inquire about what may be going on in the student’s life, the student

may interpret teachers as just interested in one particular, de-contextualized

aspect of a student, in this case learning. For adolescents engaged in complex

identity work, answering fundamental questions about who they are and who

they want to be, this “just teach” approach is unsatisfying and often leads to

adolescent disengagement (Chhuon & Wallace, 2012).

As evidenced by the frequency of teacher should (a structural code) and

bridging (a thematic concept) co-occurrences (n = 31), many students wished

to strengthen relationships with teachers. The majority of discussions of such

bridges reflected the students’ desire for these processes and interpersonal

experiences to occur with greater frequency. Effortful engagement was sug-

gested as something students thought teachers should do; however, the con-

cept was only discussed about half as many times as something teachers

already do. In fact, the desire for teachers to effortfully engage students was

the most commonly discussed prescriptive concept.

McHugh et al. 21

A roadmap to constructing bridges. Within educational settings, forming and

maintaining persistent, positive relationships in order to fulfill relatedness

needs remains vital, despite numerous constraints such as large class sizes

and a relentless focus on standardized testing. Youth participants described

ways in which teachers could maximize the limited opportunities available

for interactions with students. For example, a female described an experience

of feeling understood by recounting how one of her teachers was able to

connect with his students through simple, but repeated, acts of effortful

engagement:

[My teacher] will ask you at least one or two questions about you and

how your day is. And all you have to do is just answer within a few

words and he’ll automatically know how you feel, and he’ll give you

motivation and stuff, just really inspirational words and you’re like,

“Oh, he understands where I’m coming from because he’s been

through it.” (Female, MN2)

This student’s example illustrates the strong trend repeated frequently

within our data of students’ perceptions of teachers knowing them or caring

about them depending on the teacher’s willingness to approach and engage

them. By asking students about their day, paying attention to student con-

cerns, and respecting student needs, the teacher let this student know he

cared. Significantly, the student identified this process of effortful engage-

ment as “giving motivation.” Also important is the “understands where I’m

coming from” portion of this adolescent’s explanation of her experience with

this teacher. The establishment of commonalities between student and teacher

helps to eliminates separateness between student and teacher in order to build

connections (Milner, 2011).

Building stronger student–teacher relationships can take place within a

predominantly instruction-focused setting. One participant, for example,

described establishing connections with some of her teachers:

I got to know my teachers really well. And since I had them for two

years, the same teachers, we built a relationship and they knew us, and

they knew that I was focused and I wanted to get my work done. So, it

was more of a relationship I would say. (Female, PA2)

In her explanation of building supportive relationships with teachers, this

student attributed her success to the length of time that they knew each

other. The duration of interaction, or “no end in sight” parameter, has been

22 Urban Education 48(1)

identified theoretically as a key characteristic of relationships able to fulfill

relatedness needs (see, for example, Baumeister & Leary, 1995), but also by

policy-oriented researchers who advocate for school relationship models that

ensure each student has a long-term relationship with at least one school-

based adult (see for example Wimberly, 2002).

Accordingly to our participants, bridge-building processes, such as effort-

ful engagement, do not have to be time- or labor-intensive, but they must be

authentic and genuine. Attention from teachers in the form of effortful

engagement was often appreciated as a form of expressed caring, which acted

to support relationship development. Several participants, while acknowledg-

ing the difficulty teachers might have connecting with students—especially in

the face of persistent disciplinary problems or challenging academic struggles—

maintained the importance of teacher’s effortful engagement in these circum-

stances. For example, one student said:

If a student’s grades are slipping you can call them in and talk to them

or something . . . pull them out of class or something or have them stay

after school and just talk… Talk about the situation. (Female, CA2)

To maintain school functioning, students in distress are in particular need

of supportive relationships with teachers (Juvonen, 2006). Moreover, stu-

dents living in worlds of hyper-segregation by race and class, but also in

terms of educational attainment, might face particular needs in terms of social

support in order to navigate discontinuity between personal experiences and

the college-bound ideal promoted in high schools (Farmer-Hinton, 2008).

This participant understood the critical role supportive teacher relationships

play for vulnerable students.

The special role of support. Adolescents’ interpretations of strong student–

teacher relationships positioned support as a critical factor of such relation-

ships. This support took on a variety of forms; when discussing instances in

which teachers had provided support, students remembered teachers giving

them advice, helping them with learning tasks, and assisting with more

abstract, global issues such as exploring possible goals and career options.

Support-related codes accounted for a large portion (about 40%) of the things

students wished teachers would do. Our findings align with Ozer, Wolf &

Kong’s (2008) findings that adolescents experienced care through the typical

support modes such as discussing problems or seeking advice, but also

through the context of academic instruction (see also Schmakel, 2008’s

example of teacher empathy). These findings also support the concept of

teaches as “institutional agents,” who have the ability to directly or indirectly

McHugh et al. 23

allocate resources or opportunities to students (Stanton-Salazar, 1997), and

the importance of school-based social capital gathered through school net-

works in regards to youth postgraduation planning (Farmer-Hinton, 2008).

The provision of resources towards students’ achievement of goals

accounted for nearly one third of discussions about support students reported

having received, as well as nearly one third of discussions of support students

desired. Students used phrases like “don’t hold you back in the class,” “helps

me get to my interests and my goals,” and “talks about life” to describe past

experiences of receiving resource support via teacher relationships, and also

to describe the types of support students desired more of from teachers. One

student explained that “‘Cause like you could talk to [teachers] about any-

thing and they would motivate you,” but she also described her current school

experience as not meeting that expectation, which “ticks you off a little bit.”

Another student believed teachers can “motivate me to do better in school

[rather] than to just goof off,” because they knew him well enough to have

high expectations of him. Thus, one of the primary perceived benefits of

strong, positive relationships with teachers is continued motivational

resources to persist in academically challenging experiences related to attain-

ing academic goals.

As can be seen above, many of these statements referred directly to

instructional experiences. The value instructional experiences have to

strengthening relationships has been found in other studies. For example, in

Ozer, Wolf & Kong’s (2008) sample of ethnically diverse urban adolescent,

more than half reported respect for teacher was based upon assessments of

teaching effectiveness and clarity of instructional approach, while those same

adolescents lost respect for teachers who did not explain course material or

seem to care whether students understood it. The consistency of these find-

ings across qualitative studies of adolescent–teacher relationships demon-

strate the salience, or perceived importance, of these adolescent interpretations

of school-based experience and of the value that the students assign to this

kind of effort.

Barriers: Understanding Pattern and Contradiction

We define a cluster of emergent categories, barriers, as processes that pre-

vent the two persons in a relationship from becoming interpersonally closer.

Most often, these processes function to both undermine connections between

students and teachers, and to prevent those connections from growing stron-

ger. The most commonly discussed barrier was inattention: an instance in

which a person does not adequately attend to another person’s actions or

24 Urban Education 48(1)

communicated thoughts. In this section, we describe students’ representa-

tions of some barriers described as detrimental but also a barrier unexpect-

edly described as appropriate and beneficial—that of boundaries.

Barriers that alienate youth. As mentioned above, our adolescent partici-

pants interpreted failed attempts, or the perceived lack of teacher attempts, to

make a meaningful connection and offer support—especially in response to a

problem—as a lack of caring. As one male explained:

I can truthfully say, most teachers now, they don’t care about their

students, they just care about getting money. They just care about get-

ting paid . . . if you don’t know what you’re doing, they’ll briefly show

you but they’re not gonna like really show you. (Male, PA3)

Here, this adolescent perceived his teacher to attend to an instructional

need superficially, and consequently the student equated this inattention to a

lack of teacher investment in his well-being. In a more extreme example, one

youth suggested his teachers cared so little about him, even in dire need, he

would not receive assistance:

Say my mom and dad see me like on the streets. They would help me.

And if, if my—like a teacher would see me, they’d probably just like,

“Oh, you see what you did. You did, you just messed up there.”

[Teachers] wouldn’t care. (Male, CA3)

Here, this adolescent contrasted the investments in his well-being made by

his family with the investments made by school-based adults in order to dem-

onstrate his interpretations of his relationships with teachers. Milner and

Tenore’s (2010) proposal that teachers’ understandings of school as commu-

nity, wherein students and teachers are conceptualized as family members as

a critical component of culturally responsive classroom management, maps

onto this adolescent’s lack of confidence in the teacher’s genuine investment

in students’ well-being.

Statements similar to the one above demonstrate the perceived importance

of teacher inattention. However, more than simply the lack of effortful

engagement, incidences coded as inattention had a negative, not just neutral,

connotation—teachers cared so little about them that they did not even pay

attention. These references include phrases like “[teachers] never ask us

about our background,” they “just teach,” the teacher “always says he has

something else he has to do,” and teachers “just . . . give us the work.” From

the complicated features of their lives outside of the classroom to their

McHugh et al. 25

individual instructional needs, student statements indicated a belief that their

teachers did not understand adolescents as individuals. One student summed

it up saying “they don’t want to get to know us, that’s how it feels.”

Because empirical evidence exists that teachers are reluctant to get to

know their students on an interpersonal level (see for example Davis, 2006),

students likely perceive this hesitation accurately. Due to the fact that instruc-

tional experiences are co-constructed, barriers such as inattention can elicit

behavioral response in students. As one student concluded, “I’m just not rais-

ing my hand or speaking to the teacher at all.”

In addition to the belief that many teachers do not attend to or care for

students, some students reported believing that their teachers’ negative

assumptions about students stemmed from the teacher having a stereotype:

an instance when a person is presumed to behave, believe, think, or experi-

ence something simply because of some external categorization. Stereotyping

moves beyond inattention, which could be due to any number of uninten-

tional circumstances such as being overworked, a high number of students in

a day, or too little time spent with any one student. Rather, stereotyping sug-

gests an intentional neglect of individual differences in favor of overriding

assumed group characteristics; as such, the following examples are more

potentially damaging than the preceding.

Across all focus groups, there were almost as many incidences relayed of

teachers enacting stereotypes as there were of teacher inattention (22 to 25

references, respectively); not surprisingly, no students reported stereotyping

as something they wanted teachers to do. These beliefs were often discussed

as undermining the potential for creating strong student–teacher relation-

ships. Participants relayed multiple incidences of their teachers and school

personnel applying stereotypes to themselves and their fellow students.

These incidents could be stereotypes as broad as stereotypes about racial

groups,

Last year when I was here I had my braids in and they thought auto-

matically I was a bad student. (Male, PA3)

as specific as stereotypes about members of the same family,

I have a brother. He’s the total opposite of me and . . . [teachers] judge

me like to my brother’s standards, and I’m a whole different person.

(Male, PA3)

or based upon an individual’s academic achievement:

26 Urban Education 48(1)

. . . the teachers that don’t really know me, they just judge me by my

academics and stuff. (Female, CA2).

Students were quite aware of and sensitive to teachers’ stereotyping

behaviors and negative assumptions. Awareness of stereotyping develops

quite young (McKown & Weinstein, 2003), and some of the students in

our focus groups were deeply affected by teachers’ negative assumptions.

Students wished that teachers would take the time to find out more about

them:

And just don’t look at it like, “our life or our looks”—just [looking] a

little bit inside of the student would be better. (Male, PA4)

Students advocated that their teachers should give them the benefit of the

doubt and expressed appreciation when teachers did evidence a nonjudgmen-

tal attitude toward students. Regardless of the variety of stereotype, students

reported that these overgeneralizations obscured their unique features under

the overlay of presumed characteristics. As we know from previous research,

stereotypes have detrimental effects on how students see themselves and sub-

sequently perform (Steele, 1997), and on how teachers evaluate their students

(Downey & Pribesh, 2004). Our findings illustrate the effects of stereotypes

on classroom functioning. These incidents acted as barriers preventing the

student and teacher from growing closer, thus impacting not only their aca-

demics in a direct manner, but also in an indirect manner by prohibiting the

satiation of the need for relatedness and connection between the student and

teacher.

Boundaries as a developmentally supportive barrier. As adolescents move

towards emerging adulthood, the optimal student–teacher relationship must

support continued identity work and autonomy-seeking (Arnett, 2007). Ado-

lescents’ desire to form relationships with adults remains, but these relation-

ships must accommodate adolescent development (Davis, 2003). Our data

suggest developmentally supportive school-based adult relationships are, in

part, derived from the collaborative construction of boundary expectations.

Establishing and maintaining clear, mutually constructed interpersonal bound-

aries does in fact keep certain aspects of two persons (i.e., student and adult)

separate. However, within these boundaries students reported experiencing

optimal student–teacher relational experiences. Based on our data, we theo-

rize these interpersonal boundaries, as described by our adolescent partici-

pants, provide a sense of predictability and comfort.

McHugh et al. 27

The desire to coconstruct predictable and appropriate boundaries within

the student–teacher relationship is evident in one student’s comment that

“(i)t’s supposed to be a teacher and student relationship.” Another described

the perceived importance of boundaries in this way:

I’d say [teachers should spend] time to know the student and get close

with them as possible as you can, but not that close that they begin to

feel like you’re doing something wrong. (Female, CA2)

Our participants were very clear that close student–teacher relationships

are not friendships. Statements such as “(t)he teacher’s objective is to teach,

not to have the students like the teacher,” “they’re not in my personal life, so

I’m not going to get to know my teacher,” and “I don’t confide that much in

my high school teachers, ‘cause that wouldn’t be appropriate” demonstrate

that adolescents have different expectations for their relationships with teach-

ers as compared to other social relationships. Based on our analyses, the

student–teacher relationship as described by our participants is a professional

one in which, under ideal conditions, both parties are invested in a common

goal—that of the student’s academic success. For example, as one student

stated in criticism of a teacher who she felt violated her boundary

expectations:

I feel I’d rather have her sit down with me and critique what it is that

I need in the class to pass and stuff, like—I mean, she talks to me about

some of my interests, but, um, that’s not gonna get me to pass the

class—and that’s my goal. (Female, CA2)

This adolescent focused her attention on passing the class; however, she

felt that her teacher focused too much attention on the more personal question

of her interests. Her expectations for the boundaries in their relationship ori-

ented more towards the professional, while her teacher’s seemed, in the stu-

dent’s opinion, to orient more towards the personal.

Our adolescent participants, like the one above, quite clearly stated which

aspects of their personalities they felt comfortable sharing, and which they

did not. Universally regarded as important, participants named students’

strengths and weaknesses as learners as the most vital personal information

for a teacher to know. Interests and goals, almost universally agreed to be

appropriate, were far less controversial than personal history, which typically

split the adolescents in two groups, often differing on what they defined as

28 Urban Education 48(1)

personal history. Specifically, deep personal history, family circumstances,

or anything that they could “get in trouble” about were not acceptable mate-

rial to be shared; however, the fact that there are family circumstances that

might warrant some leniency crossed back into acceptable information to

share. Feelings and emotions, however, were typically regarded as too per-

sonal to share; one participant summed up this finding perfectly,

It’s supposed to be a teacher and student relationship. When you put

feelings in it, it makes it like a friendship, but it’s not supposed to be.

(Female, PA2)

The statements above seem to contradict—on the one hand promoting

effortful engagement and support and on the other promoting interpersonal

boundaries. These delicate distinctions indicate the complex reality of student–

teacher relationships in high schools. Regardless of intentions, teachers’ bids,

or attempts to engage students, might be misinterpreted as intrusions upon

the students’ privacy, or as punitive actions. One student described this con-

cept of bid misinterpretation in the following way:

The students probably take it in a different way, like a negative way, and

they’re probably thinking in their mind, like get off my back or some-

thing . . . you know, you can’t breathe around [teachers]. (Male, CA3)

The challenge each student–teacher dyad faces lies in the construction of

interpersonal boundaries that maximize the potential of the relationship to

meet the student’s developmental needs and are close enough so that students

feel cared for and supported, but not intruded upon. Social mores, power dif-

ferentials, respect for privacy, and characteristics of each individual are likely

all at play in the co-construction of these boundaries.

Ozer, Wolf and Kong (2008) suggest distinctions between the student as

person and the student as learner are critical. Currently, though, these remain

undifferentiated in the literature. Based on our results, one could make the

parallel to those aspects of the adolescent which fall on either side of the

boundaries—the self as learner consisting of the accessible aspects of

the student, and the self as person consisting of those aspects that remain

inaccessible. This distinction is exemplified in the following participant

explanation:

. . . I think teachers need to get to know you like in the goals and inter-

ests area, but not in the feelings in area because that’s that kind of

McHugh et al. 29

respect boundary. So they don’t need to know your past, like your

whole past, everything that happened. They don’t need to know how

you feel about everything. But, if they know what you’re interested in,

they know where you want to go, not necessarily where you’ve been

. . . I don’t know, just get involved somehow. (Female, PA2)

The respect boundary the adolescent referred to brings to the forefront a

key characteristic of student–teacher relationships linked to academic

achievement. As the youth says, teachers don’t need to know a student’s

“whole past,” but teachers do need to know where a student wants to go and

what that student is interested in, and this information will be highly indi-

vidualized. Determining the aspects of the student most relevant to reach

academic goals is a level of specificity needed so that the positive student–

teacher relationship is not the end of itself; rather, it is the translation of that

supportive relationship into academic achievement and positive outcomes

that matters.

Building bridges while respecting boundaries. Effortful engagement leads to

knowledge and connection, but its success depends on existing knowledge.

In other words, possessing some degree of knowledge about individual stu-

dents, then, gives the teacher a greater opportunity to individualize interac-

tions based on student’s characteristics. Participants described a multitude of

initial approaches teachers might take in order to unobtrusively collect infor-

mation. Similar to the suggestions for simple modes of effortful engagement

offered above, our participants also suggested methods for gathering infor-

mation about students. For example, several students recommended learning

through classroom observation:

Well, I don’t think the teacher should really ask the student, I think the

teacher should study the student. Not like in a stalking way, [laughter]

but just like study them. (Male, CA3)

This student clearly voiced his desire for the upholding of boundaries

regarding the solicitation of personal information along with the simultane-

ous desire to be known by his teachers within these comfortable boundaries.

The participants promoted observation for several reasons, including the

notion that “how you interact with your friends in the classroom” allows for

a “double-sided view” of the student. Some adolescents even recommended

specific things for teachers to attend to, and these recommendations focused

on the teacher gathering some degree of tricky emotion information without

alarming the student or forcing them to discuss a personal issue. However, as

30 Urban Education 48(1)

our participants pointed out, this kind of classroom environment needed to be

established from the beginning of the school year in order for students to feel

comfortable.

Additional suggestions demonstrated the adolescents’ opinion that instruc-

tion is closely linked to this process. For example, participants recommended

simply asking the student if they needed help or if everything was alright on

a frequent basis. Participants also suggested teachers have students write

about their goals, interests, questions or concerns and then using that infor-

mation to plan for interpersonal and instructional interactions. Finally, the

participants recommended caution, both when teachers joke around with

their students in that it can cross the line into too offensive, and also when

asking students questions. One participant cautioned against “(b)eing nosey”

saying that this when questions are too intrusive and cross the boundary,

whereas being “friendly is just get to know the person; . . . (a)nd then keep

that into yourself,” stressing maintaining confidence as key.

Students reflected on how teachers might communicate positive intentions

during attempts to effortfully engage that could decrease a student’s likeli-

hood of becoming defensive. One student presented one way in which teach-

ers might be more likely to make a meaningful connection:

I guess they just need to make it known that they’re there for support,

but not to force talking upon anyone. (Female, PA1)

This type of bid gives students the ability to choose whether or not to

engage in help-seeking, personal disclosure, or any other act of relating,

while simultaneously working toward meeting the students’ needs for relat-

edness by demonstrating both a degree of care and respect for the student as

a unique individual. Thus, boundaries can simultaneously be understood as

appropriate and desired support for adolescents’ establishment of an indepen-

dent identity, as well as indications that adolescents clearly understand the

role of teachers as gatekeepers to critical resources.

Conclusion

One youth’s lament about a particular teacher provides a key takeaway from

our interpretations of adolescents’ understanding and experiencing relation-

ships with teachers in high school:

One of my teachers, sometimes, I feel that her way, her approach to

trying to [engage] her students is by getting her students to like her.

McHugh et al. 31

And I think that that’s not, that shouldn’t be the teacher’s objective.

(Female, CA2)

Here, this female student recognized what Toshalis (2011) calls the “rhet-

oric of care”—a care that “ultimately produces symbolic violence through

the deflection of accountability, the foreclosure of opportunity, and the disre-

gard for sociopolitical inequities.” By not taking responsibility for providing

a genuinely caring, supportive environment, taking steps to provide opportu-

nities relevant to the adolescent’s needs, or even acknowledging some stu-

dents simply need more assistance than others, but instead choosing to merely

garner surface level affection, this teacher is a disappointment to her student.

As a case example of missed opportunity for genuine student–teacher con-

nection, this critical perspective of impersonal, shallow care offered by the

adolescent focuses us on teachers’ objectives.

Our focus group participants, representing a diverse cross-section of urban

US high school students, had very clear and consistent perceptions of typical

student–teacher relationships, and of how these relationships should function

optimally. In our data, we identified bridging processes, the most important

of which were incidences in which the teacher undertook intentional actions

so as to engage or connect with their students. The adolescent participants

repeatedly endorsed appreciation for and clarified the value of the effort that

their teachers expend when they make bids or overtures at interactions with

them. Though these overtures may be as small as demonstrating an under-

standing of how the student is feeling or helping with a difficult learning task,

these bids let students know that their teacher cares about them and is invested

in their success as individuals.

We likewise identified barrier processes, the most salient of which were

incidences of perceived teacher inattention and stereotyping. All of the barri-

ers discussed by our participants demonstrated a lack of investment in the

student as an individual, and again, our participants demonstrated a marked

attunement to the repercussions of these interactions, and stated a strong

desire for these occurrences to be less prevalent in their daily interactions.

We also identified an essential process of establishing mutually con-

structed boundaries. While these processes do not bridge two people together,

they also do not act as a typical barrier. Instead, mutually constructed bound-

aries establish shared respect and guidelines for appropriate behavior within

the normative roles of teacher and student. Based upon our data, we hypoth-

esize students and teachers working together to establish these boundaries

allows for a direct translation into academic achievement and positive youth

outcomes.

32 Urban Education 48(1)

We argue attention to both bridges and barriers will improve student

engagement and academic achievement models. Relatively few participants

reported consistently experiencing positive, supportive relationships with

teachers in which their needs were met; instead, many reported generally

feeling un-cared for and misunderstood by teachers. By recounting rare sup-

portive encounters with teachers and revealing perspectives on ideal student–

teacher relationships, participants were able to provide valuable information

about how teachers might simultaneously meet students’ academic and rela-

tional needs.

Implications for Educational Practice

Despite this evidence that student–teacher relationships matter to youth out-

comes, policymakers tend to focus on increased student achievement rather

than the social processes and relational aspects of schooling that may

strongly influence this achievement. A brief review of several successful

Race to the Top (RTTT) recipients illustrates how policymakers systemati-

cally neglect considerations of student–teacher relationships. In these recipi-

ents’ proposals, the quality of student–teacher relationships is reduced to

to-be-determined status or undefined references to school climate, or are

considered the domain of external community partners who service such

concerns (e.g., Delaware Department of Education, 2010; Massachusetts

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2010; Tennessee

Department of Education, 2010). Current economic and political pressures

generate conditions that are not conducive to high levels of contact between

students and teachers; understanding how to maximize the limited interac-

tions that students and teachers do experience is critical.

To be fair, however, our empirical understanding of how and why positive

student–teacher relationships translate into student engagement, and ulti-

mately student achievement, is still developing. In particular, how students

and teachers collaboratively construct supportive relationships and the con-

tribution of these relationships in promoting student engagement in learning

is of particular relevance. Additionally, our findings regarding the desire for

interpersonal boundaries may seem to contradict previous work which indi-

cates that students desire deep, more intimate relationships with their teach-

ers (see, for example, Cammarota & Romero, 2006; Valenzuela, 1999).

However, we propose that rather than constituting a contradiction to these

previous works, our findings regarding boundary expectations instead reflect

a reaction to the pragmatic concerns of such contextual factors as the inten-

sity of maintaining status among peers, instructional strategies that lack

McHugh et al. 33

enacted purpose, and hostile interactions with school-based adults faced by

our youth participants.

Teachers face tremendous obstacles in establishing meaningful relation-

ships with even some of their students, let alone all of them (Weinstein,

Madison, & Kuklinski, 1995). In a hypothetical school, a given teacher may

have classes of anywhere from 20 to 40, and may have up to eight different

classes a day, which they may only see two or three times a week. Likewise,

a high school student may have up to eight different teachers in one day;

switch classes half-way through the year and therefore have courses with up

to sixteen different teachers in a year; only see each for 45 min to an hour

each day; and only have a given teacher for one course. In today’s economic

climate, schools are being asked to do more with less, intensifying already

existing challenges.

Sadly, some schools may pose even more challenges than these pragmatic

ones. As Valenzuela (1999) points out, in many schools where students’

strengths, such as their cultural heritage, are devalued, student–teacher rela-

tionships are “often fragile, incomplete, or nonexistent” (p. 5). However,

when students are given the opportunity to form relationships with their

teachers based on interpersonal communication, valuing of opinions, and

purposeful activities, they may grow to desire and appreciate more intimate

understandings of their teachers (e.g., Romero, Arce, & Cammarota, 2009).

Previous research has found that negative student–teacher interactions can

consist of the teacher engaging in gossiping, stereotyping, or even bullying

(Whitted & Dupper, 2008). In rushed, anonymizing, and even hostile school

environments, determining which teachers are “safe” to form a relationship

with is a risky gamble that many students may not wish to make. In such a

high-stakes environment, in which the student’s academic future, social

standing and emotional health may face ramifications for trusting in the

wrong person, many students may do as our participants suggested when they

expressed a preference for caution via the maintenance of interpersonal

boundaries.

These realities do not negate the need for what Valenzuela (1999) and

Toshalis (2011) have labeled authentic caring, but do mean that adolescents

may temper their expectations regarding the extent to which a supportive

interpersonal relationship can be formed within a given school context.

Thus, by understanding relatedness and autonomy existing simultaneously

within the mutually constructed boundary expectations, as endorsed by our

youth participants, these boundaries can function in dysfunctional environ-

ments as protective structures within which students can maintain a positive

sense of self.

34 Urban Education 48(1)

Building positive student–teacher relationships does not need to occur

outside of everyday instructional practices. It is likely that a set of high lever-

age teaching practices could be identified as high leverage precisely because

they increase student learning and build connections between students and

teachers simultaneously. This strategy represents a no-cost, high impact

approach. For example, teachers can structure learning activities to explicitly

recognize an adolescents’ evolving identity as an individual, such as have

been found to engage youth in productive explorations of both self and con-

tent (Bondy, Ross, Gallingane, & Hambacher, 2007; Faircloth, 2009). These

experiences, we believe, provide an organized structure for youth to actively

explain what they think and why they think it, rather than passively consume

prepackaged information; research on early-career teachers has found that

such collaborative experiences of joint learning positively benefit the teacher,

too (Donnell, 2007). Likewise, a teacher’s ability to engage in “proximal

formative assessment” (Erickson, 2007), or in-the-moment taking stock of

individual student comprehension, assists teachers in planning future instruc-

tional moves. This coincides with the observational strategies promoted by

our adolescent participants. And finally, by using “revoicing techniques”

teachers can connect students’ everyday language with academic language,

in order to maintain students’ ownership of ideas yet promote their usage of

scientific language (Windschitl et al., 2010). We believe these kind of revoic-

ing techniques promote the teacher’s authentic listening, and demonstrate to

youth the teacher’s commitment to student learning.

Limitations and Future Research

An inductive data analysis approach combined with a focus group method

effectively yielded the depth of information required to undertake a thematic

analyses of students’ perspectives on student–teacher social interactions.

However, our study is not without limitations. Group dynamics may have

played some role in individuals’ willingness to share dissenting perspectives

(Stewart, Shamdasani, & Rook, 2007), especially in cases where groups

were large and consisted of peers of differing social status within the group.

Our participant recruitment through community-based extra-curricular

programs may have led to sampling a more limited population of youth than

sampling through a school-based setting would have afforded us. Though our

sample did represent an ethnically diverse cross-section of youth, our selec-

tion of recruitment sites focused on low-mid affluence-level neighborhoods

and the programs that service them. Although using community-oriented

McHugh et al. 35

sites limited the school and academic standing data that we were able to col-

lect, this sampling strategy did afford us the ability to analyze across schools

and across geographic location (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Los Angeles,

California; and Minneapolis, Minnesota) for consistency of themes.

Additionally, descriptive data on student characteristics would have strength-

ened our investigation. For example, current academic standing or level of

engagement in school, personality traits, and belief systems all may influence

what factors different individuals perceive as bridges versus barriers.

Understanding how student characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, family

affluence, and academic achievement influence school-based social processes is

critical. It is likely that some students prompt positive environmental responses

and others do not; examining student–environment interactions paired with a

detailed investigation of teacher practice is needed to fully understand how

student–teacher relationships function in high schools. Further, exploring schools

which support student–teacher relationships to both high and low degrees would

allow for an exploration of the contextual factors hypothesized to account for

apparent discrepancies regarding the degree of intimacy desired by adolescents.

Conducting similar focus groups with secondary school teachers would

provide an enriched understanding of the themes and perspectives identified

in this research, because we could explore the convergences and divergences

of perspectives among teachers and between teachers and students. In par-

ticular, teachers may contribute additional information regarding how to suc-

cessfully navigate around practical barriers, such as increasingly large class

sizes and mounting pressure to focus on test preparation, which can impede

the formation of substantive relationships with students.

Finally, observational studies of teacher practice would provide an eco-

logically valid understanding of the salient themes identified in this article.

Ultimately, we believe attending to adolescent perceptions not only under-

scores the importance of relatedness within high schools, but also provides

theoretical insight into the mechanisms by which this can be achieved.

Appendix

Abbreviated Codebook

Barriers.

Back-Channel Communication: incident in which two or more

people are talking about another; most frequently, topic person is not present

(though this may occur), and such communications are inferred by or later

related to topic person.

36 Urban Education 48(1)

Boundaries: participant expresses that someone is expected to act or speak

in some way based on rank, role, or relationship.

Carelessness: instances or occurrences in which the participant or the

person about whom the participant is relating failed to adequately take into

consideration another person’s needs, desires or likes/dislikes; may refer to

verbal, physical, engagement, emotive, or relational.

Consequence: a repercussion of a given action, behavior, statement or

incidence.

Inattention: instances or occurrences in which the participant or the person

about whom the participant is relating failed to adequately attend to another

person’s actions or communicated thoughts or feelings; may refer to verbal,

physical, emotive, or relational.

Stereotype: when a person is presumed to behave, believe, think, or expe-

rience some emotion simply because of some external categorization; typi-

fied by an intensified, overgeneralized, and frequent reinterpretation of a

perceived attribute to an extreme degree and applied regardless of contrary

fact/observations.

Unspecified Barriers: processes which act as barriers to a relationship

growing closer, but that do not meet the definitional criteria of another spe-

cific barrier process.

Bridges. Connecting: participant refers to or describes the process by which

someone transitions into “being known” by the participant, or by which the

participant is “known” by them; the act of connecting with another person, or

growing closer.

Effortful Engagement: an instance in which one person actively and delib-

erately engages another on an interpersonal level.

Help-Seeking: the act of requesting and/or receiving assistance from

another person; may be educational, verbal, financial, physical, or advisory;

the request for one to enact one’s resources for the benefit of another.

Personal Disclosure: participant describes or relates an occurrence in

which they either shared something personal with another person, or when

another person shared something personal with the participant; may be posi-

tive, neutral, expression of uncertainty or vulnerability, or any of these in

combination with negative.

Prediction and Interpretation: when a person demonstrates the ability to

anticipate another person’s reaction (verbal, active, emotive, etc.) to an action

(verbal, active or emotive) performed by the predictor, and to accurately

gauge their intention underlying communication, actions undertaken, etc.

(Understanding) Constraints: temporal, monetary, physical, familial/

relational, etc. features of a participant’s life which, per participant report,

McHugh et al. 37

may make connecting to others or completing a given task a more compli-

cated and/or difficult proposition than would otherwise be.

Support. Unspecified Support: the act of providing or sharing emotional

assistance, reassurance or bolstering, or other form of support that do not

meet the definitional criteria of another specific support process.

Catharsis: mutual emotion sharing or emotional expression between two

or more persons.

Companionship: the desire to share time, physical space, or communica-

tion with another person, typically in a friendly or emotionally positive

manner.

Conflict Resolution: the act between two or more people to work collab-

oratively on resolving a point of disagreement, conflict, misunderstanding,

etc.; primarily verbal, though may incorporate resource allocation.

Empathizing: an attempt to share in or recreate another’s emotional

experience.

Leniency/Willingness to Work Out Difficulties: the emotional and cogni-

tive intention and commitment to resolving conflicts, differences of opinion,

etc. that occur between two or more persons; this implies the intention to

apply effort.

Problem Solving: request and/or receipt of assistance from one person by

another in dealing with a real or hypothetical problem, conflict, tumultuous

situation, or issue; primarily verbal in nature, and tends to be focused on

social situations or circumstances.

Protection: the act of buffering or guarding another person; may be verbal

(e.g.: verbal defense), physical, legal, or emotional/relational.

Resource: various different types or degrees of assistance that one person

can or does offer another person; may be financial, emotional, temporal, pro-

tective, work/education, etc.

Sharing of Difficulties: discussion of the revelation of personal problems,

concerns or issues to another person; participant may be discloser, or dis-

closed-to, but specific subject matter regards a negative occurrence in the

discloser’s life.

Soothing: the desire of a person for the consideration, kind words, or

soothing actions of another person; the act of providing the above.

Structural Codes. Teacher Does: incidents in which a participant relates a

specific instance or example of behavior that was specifically done by the

teacher.

Teacher Does Not: incidents in which a participant relates a specific

instance or example of behavior that was specifically NOT done by the

teacher; these incidents are most typically paired with a value-judgment.

38 Urban Education 48(1)

Teacher Should: incidents in which a participant relates a specific instance

when they feel that a teacher SHOULD have done something (coded regard-

less of actual occurrence of the behavior), or example of (potential or actual)

teacher behavior that the student relayed feelings (or an affirming value judg-

ment) that such behavior SHOULD happen.

Teacher Should Not: incidents in which a participant relates a specific

instance when they feel that a teacher SHOULD NOT have done something

(coded regardless of actual occurrence of the behavior), or example of (poten-

tial or actual) teacher behavior that the student relayed feelings (or a negative

value judgment) that such behavior SHOULD NOT happen.

Author’s Note

Two additional manuscripts in this series have been submitted for publication—

please see references for full citations.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed the receipt of the following financial support for the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article: The Central Research Development

Fund at the University of Pittsburgh funded this research; the authors received no

financial support for the authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Bios

Rebecca Munnell McHugh, currently a PhD student in the applied developmental

psychology program at the University of Pittsburgh, has served as a research assistant

for several psychiatric studies. Her research interests include development and mean-

ing-making in adolescence.

Christy Galletta Horner is a doctoral student and graduate student researcher in the

applied developmental psychology program at the University of Pittsburgh. She stud-

ies social and emotional development across diverse contexts.

Jason B. Colditz is a graduate student in the social and comparative analysis in edu-

cation program at the University of Pittsburgh and serves as a research coordinator at

the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. His current research interests include

implementing quantifiable metrics in qualitative data analyses and investigating

pedagogical strategies for improving students’ academic and professional outcomes.

Tanner LeBaron Wallace is an assistant professor of applied developmental psy-

chology for the Psychology in Education Department at the University of Pittsburgh,

USA. Her research focuses on youth–adult relationships and the intersections of

developmental tasks, psychosocial perceptions and effective teaching and the knowl-

edge development function of evaluative studies.

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Int J Educ Manag

Purpose As teachers are considered “knowledge workers,” the present study explores teacher performance in schools. A particular emphasis is given to assessing the performance of female teachers in the rural part of South India. Design/methodology/approach After collecting data from 563 female teachers from four blocks in Nilgiris District (Ooty, Kotagiri, Coonoor and Gudalur) consisting of 37 government schools in the southern part of India, all the female teachers were surveyed, and the data were analyzed after checking the instrument's psychometric properties by performing confirmatory factor analysis. Hierarchical regression was employed to test the hypotheses. Findings The findings revealed that (1) empowerment, organizational communication and work–life balance (WLB) and recognition and rewards are positively and significantly related to teacher performance; (2) recognition and rewards moderate the relationship between (a) empowerment and performance, (b) organizational communication and performance, (c) WLB and performance, (d) organizational culture and performance and (e) quality of work-life (QWL) and performance. Research limitations/implications As with any survey research, common method bias and social desirability bias may be potential limitations. However, proper care is taken to minimize these biases. The findings from this study contribute to the growing literature on education and training. In addition, the study highlights the importance of creating a climate for empowerment, recognition and rewards to foster teacher performance. Practical implications The study helps administrators and policymakers to understand the antecedents of teacher performance and take necessary steps to motivate the teachers for superior performance. Originality/value The conceptual model the authors developed and tested is, according to the authors' knowledge, the first of the model's kind. A clear understanding of the predictors of teacher performance may guide the administrators and teaches in fostering performance in schools. The exclusive focus on female teachers is considered in this study because of the several problems the female teachers encounter in rural areas. Despite the disadvantages, female teachers perform well and contribute to students and the country as a whole.

School Environment and Academic Persistence of Newcomer Students: The Roles of Teachers and Peers

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2022

This paper explores the relationship between the social context of schools, measured in terms of perceptions of teacher support and students’ openness to diversity, and the academic persistence of immigrant and refugee newcomer students. It investigates whether newcomer adolescents’ academic persistence varies by the perceived supportiveness of school environments. Based on data collected from newcomer students in a medium-sized city in Canada, results show that immigrant and refugee youth display higher academic persistence when they perceive that their teachers support them and when their fellow students are receptive to diversity. Specifically, newcomer youth’s educational success depends on a school environment that encourages diversity and inter-group relations and teachers who are supportive of students, encourage them, and believe in them. This study also shows that newcomer youth are more likely to academically persist in school when they perceive that their fellow schoolmates exhibit cultural humility or openness to diversity and thus are interested in knowing more about immigrants’ country of origin, respect them, and interact with them.

Motivation in the Classroom: Reciprocal Effects of Teacher Behavior and Student Engagement Across the School Year

Article

Full-text available

Dec 1993

On the basis of a new model of motivation, we examined the effects of 3 dimensions of teacher (n = 14) behavior (involvement, structure, and autonomy support) on 144 children's (Grades 3-5) behavioral and emotional engagement across a school year. Correlational and path analyses revealed that teacher involvement was central to children's experiences in the classroom and that teacher provision of both autonomy support and optimal structure predicted children's motivation across the school year. Reciprocal effects of student motivation on teacher behavior were also found. Students who showed higher initial behavioral engagement received subsequently more of all 3 teacher behaviors. These findings suggest that students who are behaviorally disengaged receive teacher responses that should further undermine their motivation. The importance of the student-teacher relationship, especially interpersonal involvement, in optimizing student motivation is highlighted.

A Social Capital Framework for Understanding the Socialization of Racial Minority Children and Youths

Article

Full-text available

Mar 1997
HARVARD EDUC REV

Ricardo Stanton-Salazar

In this article, Ricardo Stanton-Salazar offers a network-analytic framework for understanding the socialization and schooling experiences of working-class racial minority youth. Unlike many previous writers who have examined the role of "significant others," he examines the role that relationships between youth and institutional agents, such as teachers and counselors, play in the greater multicultural context in which working-class minority youth must negotiate. Stanton-Salazar provides the conceptual foundations of a framework built around the concepts of social capital and institutional support. He concentrates on illuminating those institutional and ideological forces that he believes make access to social capital and institutional support within schools and other institutional settings so problematic for working-class minority children and adolescents. Stanton-Salazar also provides some clues as to how some working-class minority youth are able to manage their difficult participation in multiple worlds, how they develop cultural strategies for overcoming various obstacles, and how they manage to develop sustaining and supportive relationships with institutional agents.

A Self-determination Theory Perspective on Student Engagement

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2012

Johnmarshall Reeve

This chapter pursues three goals. First, it overviews self-determination theory (SDT). SDT is a macrotheory of motivation comprised of five interrelated minitheories—basic needs theory, organismic integration theory, goal contents theory, cognitive evaluation theory, and causality orientations theory. Each minitheory was created to explain specific motivational phenomena and to address specific research questions. Second, the chapter uses the student-teacher dialectical framework within SDT to explain how classroom conditions sometimes support but other times neglect and frustrate students’ motivation, engagement, and positive classroom functioning. Third, the chapter highlights student engagement. In doing so, it overviews recent classroom-based, longitudinally designed research to reveal three new and important functions of student engagement—namely, that student engagement fully mediates and explains the motivation-to-achievement relation, that changes in engagement produce changes in the learning environment, and that changes in engagement produce changes in motivation, as students’ behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagements represent actions taken not only to learn but also to meet psychological needs. The chapter concludes with implications for teachers and with suggestions for future research.

Creating Connectedness Through Being Known: Fulfilling the Need to Belong in U.S. High Schools

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2012
YOUTH SOC

A multidisciplinary body of literature has established that students' affective relationships with teachers are associated with important academic and developmental outcomes. In this article, we explored late adolescents' active interpretations of what we call "being known" in high school. Distinct from a generalized perception of the school environment, namely, sense of school belonging, the concept of being known may provide a cohesive and efficient framework for understanding the intersections of developmental tasks, psychosocial perceptions, and effective teaching. Our focus group data with adolescents (M = 16.65 years old, N = 77) yielded three robust findings (a) moving beyond "just teach" teacher relationships; (b) providing instrumental support; and (c) engaging a benefit-of-the-doubt treatment of students. We examined each of these key themes to probe how connectedness is created or undermined through the moment-by-moment experiencing of relational structures characterized by students' perceptions of being known by adults in an educational context.

Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior

Book

Jan 1985

I: Background.- 1. An Introduction.- 2. Conceptualizations of Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination.- II: Self-Determination Theory.- 3. Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Perceived Causality and Perceived Competence.- 4. Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Interpersonal Communication and Intrapersonal Regulation.- 5. Toward an Organismic Integration Theory: Motivation and Development.- 6. Causality Orientations Theory: Personality Influences on Motivation.- III: Alternative Approaches.- 7. Operant and Attributional Theories.- 8. Information-Processing Theories.- IV: Applications and Implications.- 9. Education.- 10. Psychotherapy.- 11. Work.- 12. Sports.- References.- Author Index.

Withdrawing From School

Article

Jun 1989
REV EDUC RES

Jeremy Finn

Research on dropping out of school has focused on characteristics of the individual or institution that correlate with the dropout decision. Many of these characteristics are nonmanipulable, and all are measured at one point in time, late in the youngster’s school career. This paper describes two models for understanding dropping out as a developmental process that may begin in the earliest grades. The frustration-self-esteem model has been used for years in the study of juvenile delinquency; it identifies school failure as the starting point in a cycle that may culminate in the student’s rejecting, or being rejected by, the school. The participation-identification model focuses on students’ “involvement in schooling,” with both behavioral and emotional components. According to this formulation, the likelihood that a youngster will successfully complete 12 years of schooling is maximized if he or she maintains multiple, expanding forms of participation in school-relevant activities. The failure of a youngster to participate in school and class activities, or to develop a sense of identification with school, may have significant deleterious consequences. The ability to manipulate modes of participation poses promising avenues for further research as well as for intervention efforts.

The beginner's repertoire: Proposing a core set of instructional practices for teacher preparation

Article

Jan 2011

One of the critiques of professional preparation cited in this volume is that teacher education courses offered at universities are "not relevant to what is happening in schools." This may be a generous assessment. More fundamentally, we are not sure what gets taught during teacher preparation, only that it varies dramatically from one institution to the next, depending largely on the personal experiences and worldviews of the instructors. In this chapter we take a practice-based view to this issue, arguing the following: 1) Current preparation of teachers, especially in the area of teaching methods, is uninformed by knowledge of how young people learn or how novice teachers learn to teach. 2) There are no commonly acknowledged sets of K-12 instructional practices in the various subject matters that the field of teacher preparation would consider "core" to the success of new educators. 3) If a set of subject-specific high-leverage practices could be articulated and taught in teacher preparation, the broader teacher education community could collectively refine these practices as well as tools and other resources that support their development in various classroom contexts. 4) Without an identifiable set of core practices to anchor instruction by both teacher educators and beginning teachers, improvement in instruction will continue to be isolated, individual, and haphazard. Part of the solution is to bring current research to bear on the development of practices that all aspiring educators in the various subject matter areas can become proficient in-a recognizable beginner's repertoire. This set of practices would be grounded in important learning goals for K-12 students, the literature on how students learn, and emerging longitudinal research about how novices learn the craft of teaching. This effort would be part of a larger agenda that of developing a science of performance improvement for early career educators. By this we mean an evidenceinformed system of learning opportunities, tools, and formative assessments tailored to the needs of teaching novices, that can support continuous movement towards effective and equitable classroom practice. From the standpoint of teacher education, the foundations for this endeavor would include defining a set of instructional practices that are fundamental to support student learning, and that can be taught, learned, and implemented by those entering the profession. The following story of our work with teachers over the past five years is focused on such practices in secondary science, but the lessons learned are easily translatable to other subject matter areas.

Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education

Article

Jan 2011

Robert Crosnoe

In American high schools, teenagers must navigate complex youth cultures that often prize being “real” while punishing difference. Adults may view such social turbulence as a timeless, ultimately harmless rite of passage, but changes in American society are intensifying this rite and allowing its effects to cascade into adulthood. Integrating national statistics with interviews and observations from a single school, this book explores this phenomenon. It makes the case that recent macro-level trends, such as economic restructuring and technological change, mean that the social dynamics of high school can disrupt educational trajectories after high school; it looks at teenagers who do not fit in socially at school — including many who are obese or gay — to illustrate this phenomenon; and it crafts recommendations for parents, teachers, and policymakers about how to protect teenagers in trouble. The end result is a story of adolescence that hits home with anyone who remembers high school.

Classroom environments and developmental processes: Conceptualization and measurement

Article

Jan 2010

A threat in the air - How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance

Article

Jun 1997

CM Steele

A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.

Bridges and Barriers: Adolescent Perceptions of Student-Teacher Relationships

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