Ari Alexander

Teacher-student relationships (TSRs) are interactions that lead to emotional connections between a student and a teacher. There is a large body of evidence tying TSRs to various positive outcomes for students; thus, fostering positive TSRs becomes vital. TSRs also have associations with their attachment style, which conceptualize their relational tendencies, derived from early relational interactions and reverberating across future relationships. One way to conceptualize how relationships change is through relational turning-point events (TPEs). These are events that cause a change in one or both parties’ perception of a relationship, and may be applied to TSRs. Despite an abundance of associative research on TSRs and attachment style, attachment’s associations with change in TSRs has not been investigated. Assessing attachment’s associations with perceived change in TSRs may reveal interesting paths for future causational research, which may be applied in classrooms to develop more personalized TSR interventions. 

By categorizing qualitative TPE essay reports and categorically analyzing it in conjunction with attachment data, I will assess their association. To do this, I am currently administering a survey to collect attachment style and TPE data. This survey was approved by the in-school Institutional Review Board before being sent out to six high schools and one middle school. When data collection is finished, I will categorize TPE data using by identifying themes in qualitative reports and analyze the association between TPE category and attachment style.