Teachers prioritise relationships over curriculum for student well-being

Abstract

Survey research among Australian teachers revealed that teachers experience tensions between student well-being concerns and the demands of academic performance and improvement agendas. Qualitative findings revealed teachers view student-teacher relationships as imperative to student well-being and academic development. However, in a time of metrics-based education systems and pre-packaged programmes, a focus on strengthening teacher-student relationships is somewhat incongruent with current content-delivery trends and funding priorities. Teachers promoted a concept of holistic education that accorded with socio-ecological models of living and learning. These findings point to a need to better understand how to best resource student-teacher relationships for productive learning.

Keywords:

• Student well-being
• academic performance
• student-teacher relationships
• learning environments

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. There are no funding or grant arrangements to report.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A copy of the instrument can be requested from the corresponding author.