The Importance of Socio-affective Relationships in Educational Contexts: Validation of a Closeness-conflict Scale and a Motivational Communication Scale

Abstract

In studies on the motivational classroom climate the need to delve into socio-affective aspects that make up the pedagogical relationships-PR-between teachers and students that affect the closeness and communication is recognized. That is why this work seeks to validate the design of two evaluation instruments focused on PR (Closeness/Conflict Scale and Motivational Communicational Scale) applied to 459 students from technical secondary schools (Argentina) and establish links with the CMC as well as with the satisfaction and interest achieved in terms of the relevance of school learning. The results found to prove that the two assessment scales created meet measurement guarantees, showing encouraging reliability, internal, convergent and predictive validity data. Likewise, the relationships between the Motivational Communication and Closeness scales are strong since significant correlations were found. The relationship model between communication/closeness/conflict turned out to explain the satisfaction that students perceive of their teachers, demonstrating the importance of the main determinants of PR (closeness, communication and conflict) for the CMC and contributing to the evaluation of educational interventions focused on improving the climate.