The importance of teacher interpersonal behaviour for secondary science students in Kashmir.

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between teacher-student interpersonal behaviour and students’ attitudes toward science. To investigate this relationship, student perception data have been gathered with 1021 secondary science students, located in 31 classes in Kashmir, India. Teacher interpersonal behaviour was conceptualised in terms of two behavioural dimensions, Influence (the degree of teacher control in communication with students) and Proximity (the degree of cooperativeness between teacher and students), and measured with the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). Multilevel analyses of variance were conducted on students’ attitude scores and the effect of the interpersonal variables was corrected for the effects of student, class and teacher background variables, as well as other elements in the learning environment. Results indicated that both teacher Influence and Proximity were positively associated with students’ attitudes and that their effect remained statistically significant after correction for other covariates and learning environment variables.