Fostering Students’ Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Student-Teacher Relationships

September 19, 2024

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Psychology                 

Social and Emotional Learning

This review attempts to consider the eminence of teacher interpersonal behavior and learner-teacher relations in the classroom and indeed illustrate their relationship and influence on students’  well-being.

The Personality Traits of an Educator are Directly Linked to a Learner’s Development

The educator-learner relationship is critical to the learner’s development as it determines in many ways how valued and supported they feel. Learners’ well-being is regarded as an emotional state that is affected by various factors not only inside but also outside the classroom and the well-being of learners has a positive effect on their learning cycle and results. The predictors of learner well-being are learners’ traits and motivations for going to school, their perceptions of educators’  interpersonal behavior, and school performance. 

Numerous researchers have mentioned that the educator’s  personality, motivation, awareness, and passion are vitally important  in the teaching process and in creating a positive teaching climate. Educator interpersonal behavior has been shown  to influence learners’ success in addition to learner motivation, educational achievement, and happiness.  Researchers found  that strong social interactions can help learners to feel autonomous, engaged, and confident,

motivating them to  be interested in their educational objectives and to be enthusiastic  about them.

The Main Components of Positive Psychology

The goal of positive psychology is to promote subjective well-being and happiness. A main part  of Positive Psychology centers around well-being, and this can be further divided into 5 components:

1: Positive Emotions: can be the most powerful motivators in human behavior

2: Engagement: degree of commitment, participation, and focus

3: Relationships: need to feel close to others, to love them, to experience physical and psychological connection with them is a strong inner need

4: Meaning and Purpose: resources to complete important goals not focused on ourselves

5: Accomplishment: living a successful, purposeful life. 

Resilient and caring interactions with educators enable learners to be more self-confident, protected, and knowledgeable in the educational environment. The awareness of the educator’s connection with learner’s can be divided into three dimensions: friendship (warmth, directness, and safety in the relationship), struggle (degree to which educators perceive the connection as bad, unpredictable or uncomfortable), and dependence (dynamic where educators are inclined to act as an authority reinforcing suitable behavior and modifying inappropriate engagements). The friendship dimension is the sole positive dimension. Favorable educator-learner rapport

looks like good communication, help, and personal connection. This can reduce the prevalence of a depressed-nervous state in learners

Attachment Theory:

Attachment theory has been used to describe three significant aspects to examine the emotional excellence of educator-learner relationships: closeness (security and warmth that is felt in a connection), conflict (absence of rapport lead to high levels of friction), and dependency (degree to which the learner is dependent on the teacher)

Self-Determination Theory

Self-Determination Theory suggests that people will be enthusiastic and emotionally well-adjusted if the have numerous chances to meet three basic needs: Competence (requirement to be effective in one’s personal obligations and exhibit knowledge of the actions that a person performs well), Autonomy (feeling of independence), and Relatedness (need to develop close social relationships)

Teachers Play an Important Role in the Wellbeing of their Students

This review should highlight to teacher’s the importance of their relationship with their students. The author suggests teachers actively consider their role in the well-being of their students and create a safe, compassionate, and humble classroom where students feel heard. This may mean very carefully constructing feedback in a way that is useful and supportive of a positive relationship between the student and teacher. The author also highlights the fact that high levels of student well-being are connected with better grades and classroom behavior.

Notable Quotes: 

1: The role of educators in affecting the well-being of learners  is indisputable and they can take on different roles, like watching  their conversations, being careful with the feedback to learners,  paying attention to them, asking questions to involve them,  and reconsidering the classroom supervision to control the  connections

2: To manage and develop  learners’ well-being effectively in the education setting, educators  need to participate in training and professional advancement

3: Close relationships with educators can provide  learners emotive provision and security, which sequentially can  reinforce constructive manners and rule out more destructive  behaviors in the class and with their friends outside the class

Personal Takeaway: 

While student-teacher relationships is an important topic, I think the article can be quite easily summed up as “It’s important to have a positive relationship between the teacher and their students in order for quality learning to take place”. It was interesting to see some of the theories that were incorporated, but ultimately there were few tangible takeaways for educators.—Matt Browne

Zheng, F. (2022). Fostering students’ well-being: The mediating role of teacher interpersonal behavior and student-teacher relationships. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 796728.