Developing a Behavior-Based Measure of Teacher-Student Relationship Quality
Abstract
Students benefit from close, supportive relationships with their teachers. When students feel supported by their teachers, they tend to perform more strongly on social, emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes compared to peers whose relationships with their teachers are conflictual or strained. Emerging evidence suggests that the quality of these relationships may be improved through interventions that increase teachers’ relationship-building behaviors. Yet, the field lacks a measure that explores teacher-student relationship quality by examining the frequency of the specific relationship-building behaviors that may be subject to intervention. The current study aims to address this problem by developing and pilot testing a behavior-based measure of teacher-student relationship quality. Findings from the large-scale field test suggest that the scale demonstrates adequate preliminary evidence of reliability and construct validity. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.