The Quality of Teacher-Student Relationship in the School Context: An Ethnographic Survey

Teacher-student relationship is a complex and dynamic transaction which is formed over time and under multiple circumstances; it figures out the student’s developmental changes on a platform based on related factors. Accordingly, this research attempts to investigate the quality of the teacher-student relationship in elementary school through the field study of the main parties, the teacher and the student, in the context of school, and it interprets this relational pattern and its causes and effective factors. In order to comprehend the semantic system that the student and the teacher express in their behavior and perceptional communication, the Ethnography method is used.This research was conducted in two phases during two academic years. In the first (main) phase, based on a random sampling, a government primary school in two parts for girls and boys was selected as the research field and the researcher joined it for one semester. In the second phase (validation and deepening of concepts), 99 students, 19 teachers and 13 classes from six public elementary schools in Shiraz were involved in the implementation of this research. Semi-structured and unstructured interviews and semi-participant observation were used to collect data.Qualitative data analysis makes it possible to explain the teacher-student communication pattern in four layers of , teacher-student interaction routs, teacher-student features, the teacher-student mental-representation from each other, and external factors.The improvement of this relational context and the proceedings leading to it, can result in achieving positive numerous developmental consequences for students and teachers.