innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 657482. The Teacher Connectedness Project. Well
The Teacher Connectedness Project. Well-being among European youth: The contribution of student-teacher relationships in the secondary-school population
Student-teacher relationships have a powerful impact in young people’s learning and school results as well as in their wellbeing. The Teacher Connectedness Project, which is done in collaboration with the WHO-collaborative survey Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC), is an EU-funded project aimed at expanding what we know about teacher-student relationships and their importance for the students’ well-being. By means of this factsheet summarizing the project first year, we want to share with you 5 key messages from the Teacher Connectedness Project: ❖ Further attention should be paid to the separate study of teacher connectedness. In our review of literature, we found evidence that relationships with teachers and other aspects of school connectedness, such as feelings of belonging to the school as an institution and relationships with classmates, can have different effects on health and wellbeing. Therefore, we will be in a better position to inform school policy and practice if we study these aspects separately instead of using global measures of school connectedness. ❖ Teacher connectedness matters for young people’s health. Our preliminary quantitative analyses indicate that teacher connectedness have protective effects, decreasing the likelihood of risk behaviours, and promoting effects, increasing students’ wellbeing. ❖ Students’ perception of their relationships with teachers shows a consistent positive association with wellbeing for students of different ages, but the students’ perceptions of their relationships with teachers seem to become less positive as students get older. Read the full paper published in Health Education Journal (García-Moya, Brooks, Morgan, & Moreno, 2015).
Percentage of adolescents in England and Spain who agree or strongly agree with the statement “teachers care about me as a person” by age (Source: HBSC England and HBSC Spain, 2014)
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 657482.
❖ Teacher connectedness can be affected by student-teacher ratio. When we analysed whether teacher connectedness varied depending of the characteristics of the schools students attend, we found that increases in student-teacher ratio were significantly associated with less positive student-teacher relationships. Keep an eye on Journal of Public Health for the full paper - about to be available online! ❖ Teachers and students in our qualitative study helped us to understand what student-teacher connectedness is about and they underlined the connection between positive relationships, wellbeing and learning. We are working on the full analyses of these results at the moment (to be completed and published next year). In the meantime, we can share some illustrative quotes from our focus groups with students with you: I think it’s you, what it is it’s you get the effect from some teachers that they are just there because it’s their job and, you know, they get paid for it Like they have to be there
But other teachers, you know, it’s not only their job, it, you know, they’re in it, you know, full head and heart and, um…
They genuinely want to see you like do well
If they’re happy about their job, to like let the student know that they’re there for, like lets you know that you can come to them for help and just make the environment more relaxed for the student, get to know a bit about them but not too much, just so like they can work well with the student, just like so the student can get their grades while also being happy.
What’s next? What we will do in the Teacher Connectedness Project during the next year: - In-depth analysis of teachers’ and student’s views on the key ingredients of student-teacher connectedness, as well as main barriers and facilitators. - Full publications presenting the findings obtained during the first year in further detail. Don’t miss anything! Follow us at: @TeachConProject
or visit our website:
www.teacherconnectedness.wordpress.com
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 657482.
