Article Review: Addressing Effective Teacher-Student Relationships: Teachers’ Characteristics

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Summary

“Establishing an effective teacher-student relationship may affect the quality of learning” (Maleki et. al., 2017, p. 4) is the premise of many research studies pertaining to teacher-student relationships. The key word, though, is may. Research studies intend to determine ‘how much’ or ‘to what extent’ the quality of students’ learning may be affected by various teacher-student relationships. It is important to note, however, that the findings of Maleki’s (2017) study included one important fact: “interaction and relation of teacher may also be overshadowed by various factors . . . in addition to the characteristics of the teacher . . .” (p. 8). One party cannot be entirely at fault for a behavioral situation, especially the effects of a relationship. The students’ characteristics influence the teachers’ characteristics just as the teachers’ characteristics influence the students. Maturity, as well as professionalism and intellect, separate the two parties.

One of the discoveries of this research study regarding professionalism and intellect is the necessity for teachers to possess and utilize good communication skills (Maleki et. al., 2017, p. 4). The Ilam University of Medical Sciences distributed questionnaires to collect anonymous data. The findings showed that “the global score of professional characteristics was moderate” and the “highest and lowest effects were attributed to the teacher’s fairness in dealing with students and course outline provision for the students” (Maleki et. al., 2017, p. 5). The researchers determined that in order to produce more generalizable data, similar studies would need to be conducted at various universities. A suggestion for improvement is to increase data collection by conducting interviews (Maleki et. al., 2017, p. 8).

Analysis

I greatly appreciated how the researchers divided the questions on the questionnaire into three categories: personal, professional, scientific (content). In the scientific area, the majority of students chose content mastery as the most important quality of a teacher. I can see how this fact would be especially beneficial to the sciences since that field does not deal as much with human behavior and thought as history or English. The majority of students chose respect for students as greatest in the personal area. Students crave respect from authority. And today’s generation actually feels entitled to respect without having earned it (Wesely, 2017, p. 29). Comparatively, the majority of students chose how teachers handle situations as most important in the professional area.

God calls believers to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) and to “forgiv[e] one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32). Students should never report Christian teachers to be characterized as people who do not respect their coworkers and students, or people who do not handle situations appropriately with their emotions and ethics. Even in the scientific area, Christian teachers should be producing excellent work. Scripture charges believers to do all things excellently and to the glory of God (Titus 2:7; Colossians 3:23). That means Christian teachers should be prepared, make their deadlines, keep their certifications current and continue learning.

References

King James Bible. (2017). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1769)

Maleki, Farajolah., Talaei, Mehri., Moghadam, Seyed., Shadigo, Shahrya., Taghinejad, Hamid & Mirzaei, Alireza. (2017). Investigating the influence of teachers’ characteristics on the teacher-student relations

from students’ perspective at Ilam University of Medical Sciences. Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic

Research, Vol. 11(6). Accessed 12 July, 2020: DOI: 10.7860/JCDR/2017/20109.10018

Wesely, Laura J. (2017). Respect, it goes both ways: exploring school connectedness and students’

experiences of microaggressions from teachers: a project based upon a joint project. Smith ScholarWorks: Social Work Commons. Accessed 13 July, 2020:

https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/1928