Conference Contribution Details
Mandatory Fields
Annie Ó Breacháin
IAFOR European Conference on Education (ECE)
On the Nature of the Child-Teacher Relationship in Upper Primary School Contexts: Findings from a Phenomenological Inquiry
Brighton
Oral Presentation
2018
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Optional Fields
29-JUN-18
01-JUL-18
While quite a lot is known about the impact of student-teacher relationships on social and academic outcomes, the nature of those relationships has been under explored. This paper reports on a qualitative, phenomenological inquiry into teachers’ and children’s ‘lived experiences’ of the student-teacher relationship in an Irish upper primary school context. The study was conducted in a large, suburban, primary school with designated disadvantaged status. A Children’s Research Advisory Group was established in the school following Lundy, McEvoy, and Byrne (2011). Research participants included three teachers and five children from each of those teachers’ classes. Data generation featured the use of protocol writing and conversational interviews following van Manen (1990, 2014); embodied drama methods unique to this study but inspired by the work of Norris (2000) and guided by O’Sullivan (2011) and visual methods drawing on the work of Mitchell (2011), Tinkler (2015) and Chappell and Craft (2011). Three overarching thematic findings which find resonance with the fields of relational pedagogy and embodied teaching and learning are discussed. These include how teachers and children relate to one another as ‘whole, embodied feeling beings’; the idea that there is a tension between ‘closeness’ and ‘distance’ in the child teacher relationship and that there is a need for both ‘structure’ and ‘freedom’ to feature in that relationship. Further, this study found that the child-teacher relationship is experienced as ‘knotted’ with social and contextual relationships. The findings endorse placing the relational dimension of education at the centre both of policy developments and practice.