The influence of positive co-experience on teacher-student relationship: The mediating role of emotional bonding

Abstract

The teacher-student relationship is a key factor that contributes to educational activities and has hence long been considered an important topic in the field of educational practice and research. Previous studies have found that co-experience improves the development of interpersonal relationships. However, the question remains of whether positive co-experience has the same effect on the quality of teacher-student relationships. The current research aims to investigate the impact of positive co-experience on teacher-student relationships and the underlying mechanism. Building on previous studies, two main hypotheses are proposed: Firstly, that positive co-experience effectively promotes the development of teacher-student relationships (H1); secondly, that this effect is mediated by emotional bonding (H2). Three studies have been conducted to test these hypotheses (H1 & H2). In study 1, a total of 1, 273 students were invited to complete a questionnaire exploring aspects of positive co-experience, positive emotional bonding, teacher-student relationships, and a self-assessment of academic performance. In study 2, all students in a middle school in Shanghai were enrolled as research subjects. Taking each class as a unit, we randomly divided students into three groups. A mixed experimental design of 2 (time: pre-test vs. post-test) × 3 (positive co-experience type: sharing and recall group vs. simple recall group vs. normal group) was adopted. In the pre-test, all subjects in three groups were asked to complete the questionnaires. The students and their teachers would then take part in a sports festival, which was designed to foster positive co-experience within teacher-student relationships. The researchers took photos during this process and made a photo album for the enrolled students and teachers. In the post-test, all three groups were required to complete the questionnaire: students in the “sharing and recall group” were required to complete the questionnaire after reviewing the album of their shared experience with their teachers. “the simple recall group” was asked to complete the questionnaire after reviewing the album with their teachers without sharing experience with their teachers; and the normal group, as a control, completed the questionnaire directly. In study 3, 152 middle school students were invited to participate. We divided them into four groups and conducted a mixed experimental design grid with dimensions of 4 (positive co-experience type: recall vs. imagination vs. example vs. control) × 2 (teacher category: specific teacher vs. group teacher). The four groups of subjects were then required to complete tasks assessing the psychological distance and positive emotional bonding between themselves, a specific teacher, and the group teacher, respectively. They were then graded for “the vignette task”. In conclusion, the results of these studies congruently indicate that positive co-experience has a stable facilitatory effect on teacher-student relationships, and further, that positive emotional bonding plays a mediating role in the relationship between positive co-experience and teacher-student relationships. Further, sharing can promote the level of positive emotional bonding between teachers and students, and the positive co-experience of imagination, recall, and example can improve the level of positive emotional bonding between teenage students and their teachers. We also found that the positive aspect of the teacher-student relationship can be transferred to the group relationship between teachers and students.