Do Teacher Relationships Improve Student Behavior?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses whether building relationships actually improves student behavior—or whether healthy boundaries and follow-through matter more.
Key Takeaways
- Question the Assumption - The idea that relationships automatically improve behavior sounds obvious, but Dr. Baeder challenges whether the evidence really supports it.
- Causality May Run Backward - Positive teacher-student relationships may be the result of appropriate behavior and healthy interactions, not the cause of them.
- Boundaries Matter - Asking teachers to tolerate mistreatment in the name of relationship-building can undermine safety, learning, and professional boundaries.
- Relationships Aren't a Substitute - Clear expectations, predictable consequences, and administrative follow-through still matter when addressing unsafe or disruptive behavior.
- Healthy Culture Comes First - Functional relationships are more likely when everyone does what they are supposed to do and boundaries are respected.
Full Transcript
Is there any evidence that teachers can build relationships with students and thereby improve their behavior? Now, this is the kind of thing that sounds so self-evident. We hear it all the time that, oh, if you just build relationships with your students, that will improve behavior.
And often that's said in the context of the removal of systems that have been part of ensuring good student behavior, like consequences, like predictable consequences and follow-through on the part of administration. Teachers are often told, hey, just build a relationship, and that will improve the student's behavior.
That's also said in the context of students with behavior plans or students with disabilities, that if you build a relationship, that will improve the student's behavior.
And my friend Adam Boxer over on Twitter is asking, is that really true? Is that really the case? Do we have any evidence that building relationships improves student behavior, or is... they're a correlation that actually runs the other way.
The causality could run the other direction, and it could be that we have good relationships when students behave. And asking people to somehow pretend that there's a good relationship when a student is not acting right... I don't know that that is going to get us there. I don't know that we have any indication that that is true.
And certainly we want to have high expectations. We want to have positive expectations. We want to believe in our students. We want to do everything we can to show them that we believe they can live up to our high expectations. But sometimes that idea about relationships gets twisted around
and it gets turned into a somewhat abusive scenario for the teacher and for the other students where The teacher is told, hey, if you would just kind of sacrifice yourself, sacrifice your personal boundaries, suffer, be mistreated, so that you can build a relationship with the student, that will improve the student's behavior.
And what goes out the window there is the boundary that makes the relationship functional, right?
And this is something we would never advise anyone we care about in a personal, like, romantic relationship, right? Like, oh, if you would just, you know, be more loving, be more accepting, be more tolerant of the bad behavior, the behavior will improve. No, we don't believe that at all in, you know, adult romantic relationships, that someone else's behavior can be improved by you tolerating things that are violating your boundaries.
So when we have unsafe behavior in schools, when we have behavior that interferes with learning, I think we really need to question this idea that relationships are the solution. Maybe relationships are the result of everybody doing what they're supposed to do and having healthy boundaries.
Let me know what you think.