Relationships
The quality of relationships within a school is one of the most consistent predictors of student engagement.
This collection examines how student-teacher relationships, peer connectedness, sense of belonging and family involvement shape whether students feel safe, valued and motivated to participate.
It pays particular attention to autonomy support, perspective-taking and behaviour management — not as a disciplinary function, but through its relational impact on the conditions for engagement.
The Influence of Affective Teacher-Student Relationships on Students’ School Engagement and Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Approach
- Roorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M. Y., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J.
- 2011
It's often assumed that as students get older, relationships with teachers matter less and peer relationships take over. This meta-analysis of 99 studies and over 129,000 students found the opposite. The warmth of a teacher-student relationship became more important, not less, as students moved into adolescence, while conflict with teachers had its strongest effects in the earlier years.
Teacher–Student Relationships and Students’ Engagement in High School: Does the Number of Negative and Positive Relationships With Teachers Matter?
- Andrew J. Martin and Rebecca J. Collie
- 2019
A student moves through five classrooms a day, and five different relationships with teachers. This study followed 2,079 Australian high school students to find out whether the balance of those relationships, positive versus negative, shapes how engaged they are. The answer has real implications for how schools think about the cumulative effect of a student's day.
School Staff, Parent, Carer and Community Partnerships in Victoria’s Public Schools.” What the Profession Needs Now for the Future, Discussion Paper 3.
- Longmuir, F., Delany, T., Lampert, J., & Wilkinson, J.
- 2025
This is the third in a series of discussion papers commissioned by the AEU Victoria to examine what Victoria's public school system needs to change. This paper...
School climate, student engagement and academic achievement across school sectors in Australia.
- Tomaszewski, W., Xiang, N., & Huang, Y.
- 2024
This study picks up where much of the school sectors debate in Australia has stalled — at the level of NAPLAN scores — and asks a more searching question:...
Perceived teacher support, student engagement, and academic achievement: a meta-analysis.
- Tao, Y., Meng, Y., Gao, Z., & Yang, X
- 2022
This meta-analysis synthesises 71 empirical studies to answer three connected questions: how strongly does perceived teacher support relate to academic...
Impact of school-based interventions for building school belonging in adolescence: a systematic review.
- Allen, K.-A., Jamshidi, N., Berger, E., Reupert, A., Wurf, G., & May, F.
- 2022
This systematic review addresses a gap that sits at the heart of the belonging literature: while research consistently shows that sense of school belonging is...