How Learning About Commonalities Can Improve Student-Teacher Relationships and Boost Achievement at School

By Hunter Gehlbach

Relationships to teachers are fundamental to the educational success of middle and high school students. Compared to those with more strained social connections, adolescents who have positive relationships with their instructors feel better about school, behave better in class, and achieve more in their studies. But improving teacher-student relationships poses a substantial challenge. Teens often lack the motivation to develop close personal ties with their teachers – and teachers often find themselves preoccupied with conveying the Common Core curriculum, prepping their charges for standardized tests, and administrative duties at school.

My colleagues and I investigated a way to improve teacher-student relationships based on the social-psychological tenet that people are more motivated to connect with others whom they perceive as similar. In an experiment conducted in dozens of 9th grade classrooms in a large high school, we randomly assigned students and teachers to different groups, where some would be told that they had important beliefs, attitudes, and values in common, while others would not hear this message. Our results show that when people learned that they shared beliefs and values, their relationships improved – and so did student achievement.