Person:

Brinkworth, Maureen Elizabeth

Background: Although teacher-student relationships lie at the heart of students’ schooling experience, fundamental questions regarding these relationships remain unanswered. Aims: This study investigates three related questions about these relationships: To what extent do they change from the beginning to the end of a school year? Are any emergent changes associated with shifts in students’ academic or motivational outcomes? Are certain “upstream” factors associated with improvements or declines in teacher-student relationships? Sample: We investigate these questions with a sample of middle school students (N = 119) and their teachers (N = 30). Methods: Through a novel approach which accounts for both perspectives within teacher-student relationships, we assess these relationships at the beginning and end of the school year. Using multi-level models, we examine how changes in these relationships are associated with changes in students’ grades, homework completion rates, self-efficacy, and effort. In addition, we examine associations with two potential precursors to teacher-student relationships: students’ accuracy in taking their teachers’ perspective and their perceptions of similarity to their teachers. Results: We find that substantial changes occur in these relationships from the beginning to the end of the year; these changes are associated with shifts in important student outcomes; and changes in students’ social perspective taking accuracy and perceived similarity to their teachers correspond with changes in teacher-student relationships. Conclusions: Given the malleability of teacher-student relationships and their importance for key achievement and motivational outcomes, we advocate for researchers to conduct field experiments to inform how to improve these critical relationships.

For years psychologists across many subfields have undertaken the formidable challenge of designing survey scales to assess attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. Correspondingly, scholars have written much to guide researchers in this undertaking. Yet, many new scales violate established best practices in survey design, suggesting the need for a new approach to designing surveys. This article presents six steps to facilitate the construction of questionnaire scales. Unlike previous processes, this one front-loads input from other academics and potential respondents in the item-development and revision phase with the goal of achieving credibility across both populations. Specifically, the article describes how a (1) literature review and (2) focus group/interview data can be (3) synthesized into a comprehensive list to facilitate (4) the development of items. Next, survey designers can subject the items to (5) an expert review and (6) cognitive pretesting before executing a pilot test.

Background/Context: A growing literature describes multiple benefits of social perspective taking – many of which are particularly important for schools. Despite these potential benefits for administrators, counselors, teachers, and students, little is known about social perspective taking as a process.

Purpose/Research Question: If educational researchers are ultimately to design interventions to help improve the perspective taking capacities of those in schools, they need to fully understand the underlying process. Particularly important is the need to understand: What initially motivates individuals to take the perspective of others?

Participants: To investigate this question, a sample of 18 adults from an array of different professions (who were nominated as adept perspective takers) and 13 high school students (who were nominated as struggling with social perspective taking) participated in the study.

Research Design: Participants completed a survey, a performance task, and in-depth interviews as part of this mixed-method, exploratory study. The interviews served as the primary source of data and were coded for evidence of what triggered (or inhibited) participants’ motivation to engage in the social perspective taking process.

Findings: The interview data established the existence of at least thirteen specific factors that impacted participants’ motivation to engage in social perspective taking across a wide array of contexts. Seven factors generally enhanced individuals’ motivation to engage in social perspective taking; three factors were mixed; and three factors inhibited their motivation.

Conclusions/Recommendations: This research indicates that not only might individuals be motivated to engage in social perspective taking through multiple pathways, but that these pathways might be combined and/or interact with one another. These motivating factors raise important issues for further research. In addition, at a practical level, they provide a foundation for developing structures to motivate individuals in schools to engage in perspective taking more often.

Background/Context: Research indicates that social perspective taking – the capacity to discern the thoughts and feelings of others – plays a role in many important outcomes in schools. Despite the potential benefits for students and educators, little is known about social perspective taking as a process.

Purpose/Research Question: If educational researchers are ultimately to design interventions to help improve the perspective taking capacities of those in schools, they need to fully understand the underlying process, i.e., how social perspective taking actually happens. Particularly important is the need to understand: What strategies individuals use and what sources of evidence they draw from when they take the perspective of others?

Participants: To investigate this question, a sample of 18 adults from an array of different professions (who were nominated as adept perspective takers) and 13 high school students (who were nominated as struggling with social perspective taking) participated in the study.

Research Design: Participants completed in-depth interviews and a think-aloud protocol as part of this mixed-method, exploratory study. The interviews and think-alouds were coded for the type of social perspective taking strategy participants employed and for the sources of evidence they relied on, respectively.

Findings: Results indicated that participants relied on 12 different types of SPT strategies and drew from seven different sources of evidence when discerning others’ thoughts and feelings.

Conclusions/Recommendations: These findings provide foundational knowledge that lays groundwork for ultimately developing approaches to teach social perspective taking. At a practical level, these findings provide options for students’ and educators’ to experiment with as they attempt to take the perspective of one another.

When people perceive themselves as similar to others, greater liking and closer relationships typically result. In the first randomized field experiment that leverages actual similarities to improve real-world relationships, we examined the affiliations between 315 ninth grade students and their 25 teachers. Students in the treatment condition received feedback on five similarities that they shared with their teachers; each teacher received parallel feedback regarding about half of his/her ninth grade students. Five weeks after our intervention, those in the treatment conditions perceived greater similarity with their counterparts. Furthermore, when teachers received feedback about their similarities with specific students, they perceived better relationships with those students, and those students earned higher course grades. Exploratory analyses suggest that these effects are concentrated within relationships between teachers and their “underserved” students. This brief intervention appears to close the achievement gap at this school by over 60%.