“We Are the Heartbeat; There's No School Without Teachers”: A Framework for Educator-to-Educator Relationships

• In Event: Sustaining an Ethic of Care: The Primacy of Teacher Relationship

Abstract

Educator-to-educator relationships are critical for a range of educator (e.g., retention, well-being), student (e.g., engagement), and school-wide (e.g., climate and culture) outcomes. To foster and sustain healthy educator-to-educator relationships, a comprehensive framework is needed to understand what informs those relationships and how they function. Grounded in the voices of 72 middle and high school educators in the United States, and guided by the process-person-context-time (PPCT) model, this study presents a multi-layered framework that highlights the key actions, beliefs, and connections that constitute educator-to-educator relationships Additionally, the framework points out the important influences that school culture and climate, structural supports, and system-wide issues have on educator-to-educator relationships. Implications for both research and practice will be discussed.

Authors

• Ta-yang Hsieh, Search Institute

• Lex Nappa, Search Institute

• Alyssa Scott, Child Trends

• Annie E. Pezalla, Macalester College