Investigating the Status of Styles of Math Teacher's Interaction with Students

Teacher-student relationship, in all educational systems is a key aspect of creating effective learning environments. Therefore, investigating the behavior of teachers in the classrooms and identifying student's understanding of teacher's behavior is one of research necessities in each educational system. For this purpose, the present study was conducted, aimed to investigate the status of interactive behavior of teachers with students in secondary schools in Gorgan. The study method was survey and all secondary school students in Gorgan and their math teachers were considered as the study population. Thus, 354 second and third grade students with their math teachers entered the study as the sample. The sampling method in the student's group was random cluster and in the teacher's group was targeted. The data collection instrument was the standard Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction. T test was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that student's understanding of behavioral style of most of math teachers in the classroom was consistent with Dominance-Submission model, but math teachers believed that no difference was found between the use of interactive styles of Dominance-Submission and Cooperation-Opposition between them and benefited equally from both styles. Also, the results showed that a significant difference was found between the images that teachers have in mind of interacting with students and the images students have in mind of interacting with their teachers, in admonishing, strict and uncertain behaviors, which the students believe are the styles mostly used by their teachers. But teachers believe that they use these styles less. Comparing the understanding of teachers and students of using the interactive behavior of teachers in both styles of Cooperation-Opposition and Dominance-Submission showed no significant difference.