Individual and collective teacher support towards students in urban schools: identifying underlying school characteristics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Supportive teacher–student relations are crucial to stimulate academic success and well-being of students. These relations can become more strained in urban schools characterised by high levels of socio-economic inequality and ethnic diversity. However, supportive relations between teachers and students can be nurtured and be part of school policy. In this paper, we engage with these issues via two approaches, based on newly collected survey data among 541 teachers working in 23 urban secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium). First, we study teachers’ perceptions about the level of individual and collective teacher support in these schools. Next we study teachers’ perceptions about the participation among stakeholders in school policy, the involvement of parents, their views on mono- or multilingualism, and the presence of human and material resources in school. In a final phase, by engaging in structural equation modelling, we study if these factors explain variation in individual and collective teacher support.