Increasing teacher resilience in teaching children with behavioral problems: a focus on relationship-building skills

Teacher-student relationships are at the heart of education. Both teachers and students profit from positive, close relationships, yet suffer from negative, conflictual relationships. To date, only limited research has explored which specific competencies teachers need to build high-quality, dyadic relationships, how competent teachers feel in building these relationships, and how teacher education might improve this competence. This dissertation aimed to contribute to this research, specifically focusing on teacher education within Flanders. Three research objectives were formulated: (1) conceptualizing and operationalizing relationship-building competence, (2) exploring the current situation in initial teacher education, and (3) developing and implementing a learning trajectory to support the development of pre-service teachers’ relationship-building competence.

Chapter 2 describes the development and validation of the COMpetence Measure of Individual Teacher-student relationships (COMMIT) among pre-service teachers. Importantly, cross-sectional results suggest only limited differences between pre-service teachers in different years of the teacher education program. In Chapter 3, validation of the COMMIT within an in-service teacher sample is described. Associations between the COMMIT and teacher burn-out symptoms, student-specific self-efficacy, and relationship quality support validity of the instrument. Furthermore, teachers’ relationship-building competence appears to be especially important in establishing close relationships with disruptive students compared to non-disruptive students. In Chapter 4, we present the results of a qualitative interview study conducted among pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and internship mentors. The interviewees discuss several factors contributing to or hindering pre-service teachers’ ability to build close relationships with students, as well as the potential of teacher education in supporting the development of pre-service teachers’ relationship-building competence. Chapter 5 describes a Delphi study which aimed to clarify which relational and emotional competencies should be included in initial teacher education programs. With the help of an expert panel, consisting of teacher educators and researchers, we selected 36 competencies considered to be ‘need to know’. Within Chapter 6 we describe the development process and planned implementation and evaluation of a learning trajectory which targets teachers’ relationship-building competence in initial teacher education. Finally, we discuss overarching considerations in relation to the research objectives, present avenues for future research, and reflect on implications for practice and policy.