Student-teacher relationships have been studied by numerous researchers from a variety of perspectives. Evidence consistently suggests that the quality of student-teacher relationships can have a profound impact on children’s social and cognitive development. Although researchers seem to agree on this point, their theoretical conceptualizations of the relationships and how they measure them are often quite different. This study provides empirical insights for both measurement integration and theory integration regarding students’ internal relationship representations.
Items from 14 different student-teacher relationship instruments were systematically combined and administered as a composite instrument to 628 college students. The participants responded to all items in reference to a single, recent relationship with a high school instructor. This allowed comparative examination of the original 14 scales independently for internal consistency and predictive validity. The study also examined a hypothesized multidimensional structural model of students’ internal representation of their relationship with a teacher based off relational schema theory. An alternative, more parsimonious model was examined as well.
The hypothesized model was not supported by the data. The study demonstrated that multiple measurement models of various items could produce acceptable fit. The study provided evidence as to which of the 170 items from the 14 original scales most closely measure the core of student-teacher relationship quality. The study exemplified the method effect dangers of negative item wording. Finally, the study provided strong evidence for conceptualizing student-teacher relationships as a single, global relationship quality construct.