External influences.

Teachers and students do not interact

in isolation; they are a part of a larger school community that

may support or constrain the development of positive relationships. It is difficult to disentangle the extent to which student–

teacher relationships and school climate influence one another,

and the extent to which the balance of influence shifts as students grow older and their experiences become more widely

distributed within a school. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that school climate and the quality of student–teacher

relationships share a reciprocal association (e.g., Crosnoe et al.,

2004).

One interesting line of research in this area has highlighted the increasing mismatch between students’ continuing

need for emotional support and schools’ increasing departmentalization and impersonal climate as students move from

elementary to middle school (e.g., Roeser et al., 1998).

Teacher–student interactions that lead students to feel supported by their teachers, and smaller communities of teachers

and students, are important in enhancing young adolescents’

motivation and emotional well-being. Unfortunately, in most

middle schools, students spend very little time each day with

any one teacher, thus limiting their ability to form close connections. Furthermore, many middle schools approach students’ social and instructional needs from a perspective in

which management is the goal. The ensuing control-oriented

organization and techniques often backfire, creating less motivation and increasing student disengagement and hostility.

These school-level effects on student–teacher relations have

important implications for school-wide intervention, as discussed in the next section.

In sum, in student–teacher relationships, both parties

bring an assortment of goals, feelings, needs, and behavioral

styles that will ultimately affect the quality of the relationship

they form and, in turn, influence the value of their experiences

with one another in the classroom. These relationships may be

further enhanced or constrained by external factors such as the

climate and physical features of schools and classrooms.