Teacher–student interpersonal relationships and academic motivation within one school year: developmental changes and linkage

Abstract

The present study explored the developmental changes of teacher–student interpersonal relationships as well as that of academic motivation among first-grade secondary school students. In addition, the link between teacher–student interpersonal behaviour and academic motivation across the school year was investigated. The data were collected 5 times within a school year, from 566 students of 20 mathematics and English classes, from 3 secondary schools in The Netherlands. Multilevel growth curve modelling was applied. Analysis of within-year changes in teacher–student interpersonal relationships revealed that the quality of relationships decreased over time. The decrease was more pronounced for Proximity than for Influence. Moreover, students' controlled motivation increased slightly, while autonomous motivation decreased systematically over time. Teacher–student interpersonal relationships are significant predictors of autonomous motivation. Several determinants like subject taught, class type, teacher gender, and student gender can explain differences in developmental trajectories of both interpersonal behaviour and academic motivation over time.

Keywords:

• teacher–student interpersonal relationships
• academic motivation
• secondary education
• student perceptions
• multilevel growth curve modeling

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Marije Dubois (research assistant) and to all the teachers and students who participated in this longitudinal study. Our special thanks also go to the Editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this paper. This study is embedded within the first author's grant from the Rosalind Franklin Fellowship (University of Groningen). The study is also part of the PhD project of the second author.

Notes

1. The first and the second author contributed equally to this paper.

2. The calculation of the percentages of explained variance is based on the multilevel model with time (linear) and time² (quadratic) as fixed effects and on Influence and Proximity included. Teacher Influence explains 2% of the variance and teacher proximity 9%.