ROLE OF POSITIVE STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP IN LEARNING

Abstract

Student-teacher relationship has consistently been one of the strongest predictors of student learning, academic performance and educational well-being at all levels of formal education. The relational foundation on which successful learning is based is formed on positive student-teacher relationships characterized by trust, warmth, emotional support, clear communication, respect and high expectations. Nevertheless, in the educational institutions in Pakistan, the relational aspect of instruction has been the subject of relatively little systematically oriented empirical research, although institutional worries abound regarding a decrease in student engagement, lack of motivation, and the maintenance of an authoritative, impersonal instructional culture that compromises the relational context most favorable to learning. This article is a quantitative and descriptive-correlational research which investigates the role of positive student-teacher relationships in learning in undergraduate students at the University of Gujrat (UOG), Punjab, Pakistan. The University of Gujrat, Gujrat campus is used to select a stratified random sample of n= 150 undergraduate students. Two researcher-developed instruments are used to collect data: the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS), a 25-item Likert-scale measure of five dimensions of student-teacher relationships quality: trust and safety, emotional support, academic encouragement, respectful communication, high expectations, and Learning Outcomes Perception Scale (LOPS]a 20-item Likert-scale measure of students self-reported learning on four measures: academic motivation, conceptual understanding, classroom engagement, and academic self-efficacy. IBM SPSS Statistics Version 28.0 is used to perform statistical analyses such as Pearson Product-Moment Correlation, multiple linear regression, independent-samples t-tests, and one-way ANOVA to statistically analyze the data. The hypothesized results imply that every one of the five dimensions of positive student-teacher relationship quality would have a significant and positive relationship with student learning outcomes, and academic encouragement and trust and safety would be the most powerful predictors. The paper finishes with the presentation of evidence-based suggestions to teacher preparation programs, university administrators and education policymakers on how to develop positive student teacher relationships in a systematic fashion as part of the institution-wide effort at enhancing the quality of learning at the university level.