The relationship between a teacher and class is important for the learning achievement of pupils and their pleasure in learning. Dutch researcher Tim Mainhard discovered that these teacher-class relationships are very stable over the course of a school year. Consequently if teachers get off to a bad start, it is almost impossible to put things right. During four studies in high school classes, Mainhard observed pupils and asked them to complete questionnaires under different circumstances and at different times. Teacher-class relationships were found to be pretty stable. And if they did change then the relationship over the course of a school year was more likely to became worse. This is particularly the case for classes that start the school year with a teacher who exerts little influence on what happens in the class and whose 'proximity' in the class is relatively low. In such cases the quality of the relationship gradually decreases even further. The research revealed that characteristics such as being strict or friendly were appreciated equally by pupils who experienced the teacher for the first time and pupils who had known the teacher longer. This suggests that the teacher-class relationship is established almost immediately during the initial contact. Therefore the most important implication from this study is that it is probably very difficult for a teacher to fundamentally change a disrupted relationship.
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