Making Sense of Student-Teacher Relationships: One Teacher Education Program’s Organizational Approach to the Teaching and Learning of Relational Practices

• In Event: Students, Teachers, and Accountability

Abstract

This study expands upon sociology of education’s earlier research on student-teacher relationships, by inquiring about how teacher candidates learn relational practices (practices teachers use to create and sustain student-teacher relationships). This theory-based, qualitative case study explores how one teacher education program responded to pressures to teach relational practices. Using Weick’s sensemaking theory (2001) as a conceptual framework, the authors studied how faculty approached the teaching, and how teacher candidates approached the learning, of relational practices. Findings suggest that flexible, exploratory sensemaking processes occurred at organizational and individual levels. The organization’s approach of open-ended enactments of relational practice instruction promoted individual- and organization-level learning. These findings encourage a deliberate, principled, yet non-prescriptive approach to introducing new learning opportunities in organizations.

Authors

• Kate L. Phillippo, Loyola University Chicago

• Allison Blosser, Loyola University Chicago