Abstract
Extensive evidence highlights the significant influence of dyadic, emotional teacher-student relationship (TSR) on students’ cognitive functioning, socio-emotional development, and overall well-being. However, it remains unclear whether the TSR construct and its manifestations can be generalized across cultures. This qualitative study investigated TSR among 60 primary school teachers in Belgium, China, and Italy (i.e., countries with varying positions on the collectivistic-individualistic continuum of culture). Through semi-structured interviews and metatheme analysis, the study examined the similarities and differences in TSR across these countries, revealing a nuanced and diverse picture in various cultural contexts. The findings align with the existing TSR model by including dimensions of closeness, conflict, and dependency, while also extending the model to identify additional dimensions such as authority, balance, distance, fairness, increasing student motivation, patience, and strictness. Regarding cultural perspective, teachers from these three countries exhibited similar conceptualizations of closeness, conflict, fairness, increasing student motivation, patience, and strictness, whereas the conceptualization of dependency, authority, balance, and distance may be influenced by (collectivistic versus individualistic) culture. Moreover, the manifestations of TSR varied across countries, highlighting the influence of cultural factors such as cultural norms, collectivistic versus individualistic values, and the perceived legitimacy of teacher authority. These findings shed light on the complexities of TSR across countries and emphasize the significance of culturally sensitive approaches in fostering positive TSR in education.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 1287511 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-19 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
Volume | 14 |
Early online date | 14 Nov 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:Copyright © 2023 Xu, Huizinga, De Luca, Pollé, Liang, Sankalaite, Roorda and Baeyens.
Funding
The authors declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research study was funded by the KU Leuven Internal Funding (C14/19/052).
Funders | Funder number |
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KU Leuven | C14/19/052 |
Keywords
- cross-cultural investigation
- metatheme analysis
- primary school teacher
- qualitative study
- teacher-student relationship