What students say about the conflicts arising from their relationship with teachers

Abstract

This article presents the results of a research on the conflicts arising from the teacher-student relationship, seen from the students’ perspective. It was conducted at a secondary school in Angola. It aimed to scrutinize the causes and types of situations resulting from the classroom relationship between the teacher and the students. In pursuit of the objectives, the qualitative methodology was applied. Semi-structured group interviews were carried out with the participation of 129 students, whose data were analyzed through a content analysis method using Maxqda software, version 12. The results were organized around three themes: conception of conflicts by the students, situations leading to conflicts and / or conflict situations, and types of conflicts. From the perspective of the students from that school, the study revealed that the most relevant conflicts of the teacher-student relationship are related to disrespect of the ethical-deontological norms by teachers and the manifestation of unseemly attitudes and behaviors on the part of both students and the teachers embodied in sexual harassment, bribery and so many other issues, thus provoking verbal and physical aggression, revenge, resentment and hatred as well as other types of evils that “poison” the teacher-student relationship. Since the case study occurred in a public education school, further research should focus on more schools with the sole objective of measuring or comparing the results in order to generalize it in that region.