UF Researcher: Students And Teachers Benefit From Longer Relationship

January 28, 1997

GAINESVILLE — Middle schools where students stay with the same teachers for two or three years at a time foster better learning and even better discipline, a University of Florida study shows.

What’s more, most middle schools follow the high school pattern of academic musical chairs, with middle school kids having upwards of 50 different teachers in a typical three- to four-year span, said Paul George, a UF educational leadership professor who did the research.

In a study of 33 middle schools nationwide where students remained with the same teachers for two to three years, George found that students and teachers preferred their longer-lasting bonds.

“Long-term relationships with students lead teachers to greater levels of caring for those students and to an increased willingness to invest more time and effort in their education,” he said.

Ninety-five percent of the 105 teachers surveyed at those schools said the longer-term relationship made them more aware of their students’ personal lives, and 84 percent said it made them care more about each one as a person, he said.

Likewise, 71 percent of the 1,100 students George surveyed said they liked staying with the same teachers for more than one year.

But it is not unusual for a middle school student to be assigned to more than a dozen teachers in a school year, so that over the course of three or four years they have classes with as many as 50 different teachers and hundreds, if not thousands, of students, he said.

“Organized and run like smaller versions of high schools, traditional junior high schools and many contemporary middle schools may make students feel lost and even alienated in a setting that is so different from the elementary schools they are accustomed to,” George said. “Students and teachers hardly know each other. It’s not the one-room schoolhouse anymore. Combined with the pace of change in other areas of their personal and family ives, many of these students are involved in a high-speed version of musical chairs,’ in their relationships.”

Middle school students undergo profound emotional and physical changes and may experience disarray at home and elsewhere in today’s fast-paced society, he said.

“It’s a reflection of this instability in students’ lives that they need more stability at school,” he said. “We’re beginning to understand the need for more personal approaches to learning instead of treating schools like factories. In a sense, it’s validated by practices in Japanese education and industry. The Japanese have always understood the power of long- term relationships. Everything in their society is based on connection and trust.”

Eighty-nine percent of the teachers said they believed steady relationships helped them better manage student behavior in their classes, and 84 percent reported improvements in discipline. “Teachers especially were enormously positive about staying with the same kids from year to year,” George said. “Perhaps the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.’ Sometimes middle school kids can be devilish.”

Nearly two-thirds of the 586 parents surveyed (64 percent) believed staying with the same teacher for more than one year had helped their children succeed academically, and 61 percent said they preferred such an arrangement for their children.

The small group of parents with serious reservations seemed to have children who might be described as “high ability” and “high achieving,” George said. They feared their children would be academically stymied during the second or third year as a member of a long-term team, he said.

“Some parents probably don’t realize that today’s students lack the opportunities for close, interpersonal connections that they themselves had, when they went to church with their teachers, saw them at the bowling alley or ran into them at the grocery store,” George said. “Now many teachers don’t even live in the communities they teach in. They live on one side of town, but teach in another, particularly in the case of poor neighborhoods.”

Inner-city students aren’t the only ones to benefit from extended relationships with their teachers.

“They’re also popular in suburban schools,” George said. “In highly affluent communities, daddy may be away in Asia, mommy may be at a hospital charity event and the children are being raised by au pairs and governesses. Sometimes they need close connections just as badly.”