RequirmentsRTL1 xRTL_Phillippo2012_TryingToKnowMeStudentsFro
 

• Type of paperAssignment
• SubjectEducation
• Number of pages1
• Format of citationAPA
• Number of cited resources0
• Type of serviceWriting

Ive attached a file of requirements and prompt. Please read carefully. You can choose either/or article. Only one to write about.

The three responses to literature will be uploaded to Canvas in APA format, using the title provided with each prompt.  Each response will receive in-depth feedback, and the first two can be rewritten once to allow the student to improve his/her writing and earn the full ten points.  Rewrites must be submitted with earlier versions of the paper in the same document using a PDF merger tool, and must be resubmitted the week after they are returned to you (approximately 2 weeks after you submit the first one).

The title of your paper will be Response to Literature 1: (LAST NAME OF AUTHOR) Response to Literature 1:  Bartow Jacobs OR Response to Literature 1: Phillippo

 Week 3Option A

Bartow Jacobs (2018)
 
 

In this article, Bartow Jacobs, explores the field experiences encountered by teacher learners and their deep-seeded perspectives of students, culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), and maintaining high standards. Begin by summarizing the research question, settings and participants in the study before discussing your reactions to tensions in the article between culturally responsive pedagogy, developing cultural competence, and maintaining high standards. What lessons can you learn in regards to actualizing CRP in the classroom? Are you aware of any cultural constructions you experienced that may cause tensions when implementing ideas like CRP? What role might your history of schooling have played in the adoption or implementation of CRP in your field experiences? 

Week 3
Option B

Phillippo (2012)
 
 

Phillippo examined the use of personalism, teachers’ efforts to develop closer relationships with their students in three high schools.  In the article, she discusses students’ perceptions of their relationships with these teachers, both in terms of best practices and in terms of tensions that develop as a result of the way teachers build these relationships.  Summarize the research question, settings and participants in the study before discussing what some of the best practices and tensions that develop when teachers attempt to know their students better.  Consider: how do we draw the line between knowing students, providing them support and invading their lives?  How would you, in your practice, define that line and act accordingly?

‘‘You’re Trying to Know Me’’: Students
from Nondominant Groups Respond to Teacher
Personalism

Kate Phillippo

Published online: 5 January 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract Urban school districts have increasingly enacted policies of personal-
ism, such as converting large schools into smaller schools. Such policies ask

teachers to develop supportive, individual relationships with students as a presumed

lever for student achievement. Research on student–teacher relationships generally

supports policies of personalism. Much of this literature also considers these rela-

tionships’ sociocultural dimensions, and so leads to questions about how low-

income youth and youth of color might respond to teacher efforts to develop closer

relationships with them. This qualitative study, conducted over 1 year with 34 youth

at 3 small, urban high schools, explores how youth from nondominant groups

responded to teacher personalism. Data show that teacher practices consistent with

culturally-responsive pedagogy and relational trust literature do promote student–

teacher relationships. However, tensions arose when participants perceived that

teacher personalism threatened their privacy or agency. Sociocultural and institu-

tional contexts contributed to these tensions, as participants navigated personalism

amidst experiences that constrained their trust in schools. A staged model of stu-

dent–teacher relationships integrates these findings and extends current thinking

about culturally-responsive personalism. These findings inform implications for

teacher practice and policies of

personalism.

Keywords Urban education � Student–teacher relationships �
Teacher personalism � Relational trust � Culturally-responsive pedagogy �
Small schools

K. Phillippo (&)
Department of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, School of Education, Loyola University

Chicago, 820 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1100, Chicago, IL 60611, USA

e-mail: klphillippo@gmail.com

123

Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467

DOI 10.1007/s11256-011-0195-9

You’re here for science, for math, and you’re trying to know me.

(Lupe, age 17)

Lupe expressed uncertainty about teacher personalism, defined as teachers’

efforts to provide students with personal support via individual, interpersonal

relationships (Bryk et al. 2010).
1

By contrast, Malik (age 16) affirmed his teacher’s

efforts to address his poor attendance at school. ‘‘She started getting on me. She was

worried about me and she didn’t want me roaming the streets. She wasn’t acting like

my mom, she just told me how she feels.’’ Together, Malik and Lupe’s statements

illustrate this study’s primary finding, that teacher personalism has the potential to

both deliver support and bring about tension. This finding expands and complicates

our understanding of research that shows the positive impact of student–teacher

relationships, particularly for students from nondominant groups.
2

I conducted this

study with a specific group of participants—low-income students of color, each of

whom was experiencing a degree of social-emotional stress (e.g., living apart from

their parents). Further, participants attended small, urban high schools that explicitly

encouraged teacher personalism. This focus made it possible to explore the results

of teachers’ attempts to build relationships with students presumed—whether

correctly or not—to be most vulnerable and in need of their support. Participants’

responses showed that teacher personalism, which often promoted effective

student–teacher relationships, was unavoidably embedded in schools’ sociocultural

and institutional contexts. These broader contexts often failed to inspire student

trust. In such circumstances, the reach of sincere, well-executed teacher personalism

was constrained.

Research Problem and Rationale: Policies of Personalism

Policies that promote teacher personalism have recently appeared in schools and

districts, often in urban areas, and often promise to boost academic achievement.

The Gates Foundation brought national attention to personalism as they framed

student–teacher relationships as one of their ‘‘3 R’s’’ (along with rigor and

relevance) of improving high schools. Echoing prior research (e.g., Carnegie

Council on Adolescent Development 1989), Bill Gates (2005) asserted that student–

teacher relationships support academic success by ‘‘making sure kids have a number

of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve.’’ The small

schools model, substantially supported by the Gates Foundation, also highlights

personalism as key to achievement, emphasizing positive, sustained relationships

between students and their teachers (Ayers 2000; Cotton 2001; Hammack

2008; Meier 2002; see Strike 2010 for a discussion of this argument). Small

schools proponents point to teachers’ knowledge of student strengths and needs

1
Understanding that all teachers and students have relationships of some kind with one another, I use the

term personalism to describe a particular kind of student–teacher relationships as succinctly defined by
Bryk et al. (2010).
2

I use the term nondominant groups as Lee (2009) does, to describe both youth of color and low-income
youth, and to emphasize their ‘‘political positioning’’ (p. 88) in American society.

442 Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467

1

23

(Darling-Hammond 1997), and the opportunities for individualized instruction,

academic press and connectedness that comes with this knowledge, particularly for

students who have not had access to personalized or rigorous academic environ-

ments in the past (Fine 2000; Nieto 2000). Small learning communities (SLCs)

within larger schools (David 2008; Lee and Ready 2007; Levine 2010) also stress

personalism as a lever for improved student outcomes, by arranging students and

teachers in smaller units in order to promote interpersonal relationships and

teachers’ knowledge about their students. Finally, advisory programs, in which

teachers support and monitor a group of assigned student advisees, promote teacher

personalism in a range of secondary schools (Johnson 2009; McClure et al. 2010;

Shulkind and Foote 2009).

The spread of policies of personalism impacts many schools and students. As

urban school districts have restructured poorly performing high schools, they have

often chosen small school or SLC models (e.g., Cuban 2010; Hemphill and Nauer

2009). Hundreds of thousands of American secondary students—many enrolled in

urban districts, which serve populations with significant proportions of lower-

income youth and youth of color (Council of Great City Schools, n.d.)—have found

themselves in schools striving to engineer and strengthen their relationships with

their teachers.

Research on student–teacher relationships generally supports policies of person-

alism. It also inspires questions about the practice of personalism—how student–

teacher relationships develop, how they work for students from nondominant

groups—that demand empirically-based answers. This study delves into these

puzzles. It extends the body of literature on student–teacher relationships and takes

an important step towards guiding teacher practice and initiatives intended to

promote student–teacher relationships in the name of raising student achievement.

Below, I describe the bodies of literature that inform my research questions. I then

outline this study’s methods, introduce this study’s participants, and describe the

analytic strategies I used to interpret the data. Next, I outline this study’s findings. I

conclude this article by considering these findings’ implications for teacher

education and K-12 schooling.

Review of Literature Related to Teacher Personalism

Four bodies of literature—concerning student–teacher relationship outcomes,

culturally-responsive pedagogy, teacher caring, and trust in schools—inform this

study. Below, I identify how each body of literature contributes to the understanding

of teacher personalism, addresses sociocultural dimensions of student–teacher

relationships, and gives rise to questions that require further inquiry.

Student–Teacher Relationship Outcome Studies

Empirical research establishes that student–teacher relationships, particularly the

kind that reflect teacher personalism, truly matter with regard to students’ academic

and personal well being. Scholars have found that teacher support boosted students’

Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467 443

123

academic engagement, achievement and school attachment (Davis 2003; Hallinan

2008; Hughes and Kwok 2007; Klem and Connell 2004; Muller 2001). Students

who experienced teacher support outperformed their peers in GPA, attendance and

persistence to graduation (Croninger and Lee 2001; Crosnoe et al. 2004; Erickson

et al. 2009; Kahne et al. 2008; Murdock 1999; Rosenfeld et al. 2006). When

students with poor academic achievement histories encountered teacher support,

their school engagement and achievement improved (Brewster and Bowen 2004;

Hamre and Pianta 2005; Muller 2001). Teacher support has also been found to

moderate the negative effects of neighborhood violence (Woolley and Bowen

2007), school closings (Gwynne and de la Torre 2009) and social disadvantage, as

designated by lower levels of parental, peer and school resources (Erickson et al.

2009; Olsson 2009) on academic achievement. Finally, scholars connect teacher

support to youth resiliency in the face of adverse life circumstances (Werner and

Smith 1982), and to a decreased severity and incidence of youth health risk

behaviors (McNeely and Falci 2004; Resnick et al. 1997).

Socioeconomic status and ethnicity factor into many of the studies discussed

above, often as stand-alone predictor variables or as sampling criteria (e.g.,

Brewster and Bowen 2004, who sampled intentionally from low SES and nonwhite

populations). These status characteristics are more implicit in other studies of

student–teacher relationships. In Muller’s study (2001), Latino and African-

American students are overrepresented in the group of survey respondents deemed

at higher risk for academic failure. Hamre and Pianta’s (2005) definition of

demographic risk (a key predictor variable in their study) uses participants’

mothers’ postsecondary attainment rates, a characteristic that varies significantly by

ethnicity and SES (Engle and Lynch 2009). Student–teacher relationship research

consistently incorporates notions of student SES, race and ethnicity, and demon-

strates these relationships’ benefits for youth from nondominant groups.

These outcome studies, however, do not address the interpersonal processes that

lead to strong student–teacher relationships in the first place. The large data sets that

inform this literature do not include measures of dimensions or mechanisms of the

interpersonal interactions that lead to such compelling results, although work of this

nature has been done with early childhood populations and student-mentor

relationships outside of schools (Pianta et al. 2008; Rhodes et al. 2006). This

research also raises questions about the role of social class, race, and ethnicity in

student–

teacher relationships.

Culturally-Responsive Pedagogy

Research and theory related to culturally-responsive pedagogy (CRP) illuminates a

number of practice orientations and approaches that promote strong, supportive

relationships between students from nondominant groups and their teachers. Gay

and Kirkland (2003, p. 181) define CRP as an approach that uses ‘‘the cultures,

experiences and perspectives of African, Native, Latino and Asian American

students as filters through which to teach them academic knowledge and skills.’’ A

range of scholars argue that CRP (or practice by other names that resembles this

approach) engages a range of students—with diverse learning styles, funds of

444 Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467

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knowledge, and life experiences—in the learning process (e.g., Garcı́a et al. 2010;

Flores-González 2002; Gay 2000; Irizarry 2007; Irvine 2002, 2003; Ladson-Billings

1995; Nieto 2010; Villegas and Lucas 2002).

‘‘Relationships among teachers and their students are the most important

ingredient in successful schools,’’ Nieto (2010, p. 32) writes, echoing CRP scholars’

consistent emphasis on student–teacher relationships. Three themes emerge from

this literature regarding how teachers’ relational practices can be culturally

responsive. First, CRP scholarship underscores the importance of teachers’ deep

knowledge of student culture, community and sociopolitical experience (e.g., Bondy

et al. 2007; Ladson-Billings 1995; Gay and Kirkland 2003; Nieto 2010; Villegas and

Lucas 2002) as a basis from which teachers can understand and effectively engage

with their students. Second, given that students of color have so often encountered

low expectations, CRP scholars describe student–teacher relationships as necessar-

ily intertwined with academic press. Ware (2006) describes this approach as ‘‘warm

demander pedagogy,’’ in which teachers balance nurturing and support with high

expectations (Antrop-González and De Jesús 2006; Gay 2000 and Nieto 2010 make

a similar argument). Third, Irvine (1990) encourages cultural synchronization of

teachers’ practice, in which teachers use, or approximate, practices from students’

cultures.

While student–teacher relationships clearly have a central place in CRP, this

literature does not consistently specify how or when these relationships develop.

Jiménez and Rose (2010) portray student–teacher relationships and instruction as

dependent upon one another, while Sleeter (2000) and Delpit (1995) claim that these

relationships lead to effective instruction. Some scholars (e.g., Gay 1994; Villegas

and Lucas 2002; Young 2010) assert that student–teacher relationships require an

understanding of and responsiveness to students’ ethnic backgrounds. This literature

encourages teachers to promote culturally-responsive relationships with their

students, but may confuse teachers as to where they should begin or how to proceed.

Teacher Caring

Like CRP literature, scholarship on teacher caring describes a constructive student–

teacher relationship as essential to student learning. This body of literature moves

our understanding of teacher personalism forward by clarifying the sociocultural

aspects of caring.

Noddings, a recognized scholar of teacher caring, claims that ‘‘we learn from

those we love’’ (2005, p. 107) and asserts that teachers must demonstrate caring for

students in order to teach them well. She stresses the importance of reciprocal

caring, in which teachers demonstrate care while students receive and respond to it.

While she acknowledges that differences of power and culture can occur in student–

teacher relationships, Noddings ultimately emphasizes the individual student–

teacher relationship as the unit of attention and change.

Additional scholarship on caring (e.g., Antrop-González and De Jesús 2006;

Barber 2002; McIntyre 1997; Noblit 1993; Rolón-Dow 2005, Sleeter 1993;

Valenzuela 1999; Toshalis 2011) delves further into the sociocultural complexities

of caring in schools, and problematizes color-, culture- and power-blind caring

Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467 445

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theories and practice. Many of these scholars also raise concerns about teachers’

deficit-based assumptions about students’ communities or families, which can result

in teachers’ pity for, social distance from, or efforts to save their students families.

Rolón-Dow (2005) describes these assumptions—such as that students come from

dysfunctional families who care less about their children’s education than teachers

do—as ‘‘normalized racism’’ (p. 96).

‘‘Critical care’’ (Antrop-González and De Jesús 2006) scholars also focus on

socio-cultural variation in individuals’ definition of, and interest in, caring at school.

Valenzuela (1999) claims that different understandings of caring about school

contributed to alienation between Mexican–American high school students and their

teachers in her study. Authentic teacher caring, she claims, involves a demonstration

of interest in students, efforts to develop truly reciprocal relationships with them and

‘‘deliberately bringing issues of race, difference and power into central focus’’

(p. 109). Teachers’ efforts to know students also appear to vary in their appeal to

young people. Garza (2009) found that Latino students ranked academic support as

the most important form of teacher care, while White students preferred behaviors

that indicated teacher attention and kindness. This body of literature, applied to the

broader issue of student–teacher relationships (including, but not restricted to,

teacher caring), suggests that teachers’ attempts to develop relationships with

students should consider socioculturally-influenced perspectives and expectations.

Relational Trust in Schools

Student trust of educators is one reflection of how students respond to teacher

personalism. Mayer et al. (1995), innovators in trust research, define trust as ‘‘the

willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party’’ (p. 712).

Trust theorists contend that trust is rooted in interpersonal relationships and based

both on the trustor’s expectations of the other and on trustees’ specific actions

(Hardin 2002; Mishra 1996; Schoorman et al. 2007). These scholars also assert that

contextual factors—such as history, culture and organizational setting—influence

the extent and nature of trust. In this way, trust theory resembles CRP and caring

literature—all three stress relationships’ context.

Most research on trust in schools, which might expand readers’ understanding of

how students engage with educators, focuses largely on trust among adults in

schools (e.g., Bryk and Schneider 2002; Louis 2006; Hoy et al. 2006). Other trust

research considers adults’ trust of students (Goddard et al. 2001). School-oriented

trust research also emphasizes individual relationships in context. Bryk and

Schneider (2002) assert that individuals discern others’ trustworthiness through

daily interactions that are organized by different roles (teacher, administrator,

parent, student) and take place in a setting that has significant tensions over power.

This literature yields very little information about K-12 student trust of educators,

however, aside from survey instrument development (Adams and Forsyth 2009) and

two empirical studies of student trust of teachers (Adams 2010; Gregory and Ripski

2008). Adams identifies home and school factors correlated with trust, while

Gregory and Ripski clarify that student trust seems supported by a relational, rather

than authoritarian teacher discipline style, and that trust is associated with lower

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levels of defiant behavior. These findings connect student trust to school and

community context, and also to students’ response to teachers, but do not address

the sociocultural issues so central to other research on student–teacher relationships.

Scholarship related to student trust paints a grim picture for students from

nondominant groups. Payne (2008), reviewing literature relevant to African-

American trust of others in general and of educators specifically (e.g., Ferguson

2006; Taylor et al. 2007; see also Ruck et al. 2008), argues that student trust in

schools can be constrained in two ways: via limited access to educational resources

and via disproportionate experiences of negative treatment. He argues that students

from nondominant groups are prone to ‘‘low expectations, low demands, listless

teaching and inequitable distribution of resources, human and social’’ (p. 113).

Similarly, Fine et al. (2004) found that students experienced a sense of betrayal in

response to inadequate, inequitably distributed educational resources. Dispropor-

tionate school suspension and expulsion rates among students of color (cited by

Payne, see also Gregory et al. 2010, 2011) further jeopardize their trust in schools.

Alongside research that illustrates the importance of strong student–teacher

relationships, these findings raise questions about how these potentially powerful

relationships can develop in such adverse conditions.

Research Questions

The literature reviewed above makes it clear that (a) strong student–teacher

relationships, characterized by teacher personalism, can promote positive outcomes

for students from nondominant groups, and (b) sociocultural and institutional factors

factor prominently into how student–teacher relationships develop, as well as the

nature of these relationships. This information gives rise to the following questions,

whose answers will further specify principles to guide teachers’ practice of

personalism with students from nondominant groups:

1. How do students from nondominant groups perceive teachers’ efforts to

develop relationships with them?

2. How do students from nondominant groups envision optimal student–teacher

relationships? (In other words, to what extent do students from nondomi-

nant groups want student–teacher relationships characterized by teacher

personalism?)

3. What sociocultural or school factors promote strong student–teacher relation-

ships or detract from them?

Study Design and Methodology

I draw this study’s data from a larger study of students’ and teachers’ experiences

with forms of social and emotional support in the small high school setting. This

setting, with high expectations for teacher personalism and for well-developed

student–teacher relationships, provided a rich opportunity to study these

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phenomena. By design, small high schools require a high level of engagement with

students from all adult employees, beyond the parameters of more traditional

student–teacher relationships (Ancess 2003; Ayers 2000; Darling-Hammond 1997;

Strike 2010). Expectations for teacher personalism are often further formalized in

small schools via advisory programs (Johnson 2009). Assigned advisors often

address students’ emergent problems as the student’s first point of contact at school

(Gewertz 2007).

Participant Selection

Participating schools’ demographic and organizational characteristics made it

possible to pose this study’s questions about how students from nondominant

groups experienced teacher personalism. Using purposeful sampling, I selected

three small high schools in a metropolitan area of California that saw a

proliferation of small schools through both conversions of larger schools and the

opening of new schools. Selection criteria required that each school have an

advisory program where teachers served as advisors, at least 40% of its students

received free or reduced-price lunch, and enrolled at least 65% students of color.

Table 1 includes additional details about participating schools. These schools’

Academic Performance Index scores—figures calculated from standardized test

results, attendance and graduation rates—show that each school strained to meet

state-set performance expectations.

I asked twelve advisors participating in the larger study, who represented a range

of professional and demographic characteristics, to nominate two to three student

participants of color from low-income families. The larger study’s design (not

specifically related to this article’s research questions) included the following

student selection criteria: a history of disruptive behavior in class, known

engagement in health or safety risk behavior (e.g., substance use, delinquent

behavior, sexual activity), or living in substitute care (not in either parent’s
custody). This selection strategy created a limited pool of participants, but also

enabled me to talk with youth who are often presumed to need teacher support and

caring. This group of participants (see Table 2), although not randomly selected, is

diverse with regard to participant ethnicity, gender, native language, immigration

history and academic and disciplinary status.

Table 1 School characteristics

King Los Robles Western

Total student enrollment 358 295 345

Free- or reduced-price lunch 69% 82% 40%

Students of color 97% 99% 91%

California academic performance index

(out of 1,000, statewide target of 800)

529 613 637

Total student participants in study 12 10 12

All school names are pseudonyms

448 Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467

123

Data Collection Methods

This study’s data consist of observation records and student interviews. I adapted

ethnographic methods (e.g., Spindler and Spindler 1987) in order learn about each

school site. Over the course of 6 weeks, I visited all content-area and advisory

classrooms, observed unstructured periods of the day (passing periods, dismissal,

lunch recess) and staff meetings. I also engaged in brief, informal conversations with

students and educators. I kept field notes on both observations and conversations.

I interviewed individual student participants three to four times over the course of

the 2007–2008 school year. I asked students to describe their schools and their

views of good teaching. In each interview, students also described recent

interactions with their advisors, and interactions with adults at their schools where

participants or the adult initiated discussions about students’ academic or personal

lives. I asked about a range of educators so that I could learn about student–teacher

relationships that schools arranged, by assigning advisors, as well as more

spontaneous student–teacher relationships. I asked participants to describe how they

determined the extent to which they engaged with educators. In the final interview, I

also asked student participants to identify any adults at their school whom they felt

Table 2 Study participant
characteristics (N = 34)

Ethnicity (%)

African-American 23

Latino 60

Pacific Islander 8.5

Mixed 8.5

Gender (%)

Female 53

Male 47

Native language (%)

English 40

Spanish 51

Other 9

Immigration history (%)

Immigrated to U.S. (First-generation) 20

Parents immigrated to U.S. (Second-generation) 43

Neither 37

Current academic performance (%)

Strong (Mostly As and Bs) 23

Moderate (Mix of grades, passing all classes) 37

Struggling (Not passing all classes) 40

Current behavioral status at school (incidents leading to staff

intervention) (%)

No incidents 51

Occasional incidents 29

Frequent incidents 20

Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467 449

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knew them well, and what they would recommend to teachers who wanted to

support their students. Interviews with advisors (while not the focus of this article)

provide triangulating data where appropriate.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

I combined analytic strategies of reviewing field notes, discussing preliminary

findings with participants, memo-writing and exploratory readings of interview

transcripts (Taylor and Bogdan 1998). I developed a list of codes for analysis while

collecting data and developed the list further once I read all interview transcripts. To

develop this code list, I combined methods characteristic of a ‘‘tight, prestructured

qualitative design’’ (Miles and Huberman 1994, p. 17) with a more open-ended

stance, allowing for themes to emerge. I applied descriptive codes for key concepts

derived from this study’s theoretical framework (e.g., trust, perceived teacher

caring), and research questions (e.g., student perception of teacher’s relational

practices), along with codes that identified emergent themes in the data. The

processes of data coding and analytic memo-writing informed the development of

focused, thematic codes (e.g., teacher actions described by students as ‘‘good for

me, but I don’t like it’’). I applied the full set of codes to interview transcripts using

HyperResearch software. During the early stages of the coding process, I refined

and expanded my code list, applying it to all transcripts. After I coded all the data, I

used visual case display strategies (Miles and Huberman 1994) to order and focus

my interpretation of coded data.

While using reasonably established analysis methods, I also considered how my

positioning as a researcher had the potential to influence how I made sense of this

study’s findings, and how I generated the findings in the first place. Fine and Weis

(1998) assert that qualitative researchers ‘‘coproduce the narratives we presume to

‘collect’’’ (p. 277), highlighting how researchers themselves contribute to what

research participants say. I neither wanted to constrain participants’ responses, to

corral participants into providing ‘‘right’’ answers, nor miss the meanings of

participants’ statements due to my own limitations. As a white graduate student

from a university known by most students at King, Los Robles and Western, I

differed from participants with regard to race, culture, socioeconomic status, age

and status within the United States’ educational system. Further, as a former school

social worker and an instructor to preservice teachers and social work students, I

was highly familiar with teachers’ work and with practices of teacher personalism. I

had many reasons to approach this study with caution about the potential influence

of my own identity and subjectivity.

My efforts to tame my own subjectivity (Peshkin 1991) permeated my

construction of the study and my analysis of the information shared by participants.

I interviewed candidates at three sites, multiple times over one school year, in order

to hear perspectives from a diverse group of students and to establish relationships

with them that would facilitate clear communication and, ideally, the development

of authentic rapport. While recruiting and interviewing participants, I strived to

maintain an ‘‘outsider within’’ stance (Acker 2000; Collins 1986), as someone who

was clearly not a high school student from a nondominant group but who was

450 Urban Rev (2012) 44:441–467

123

familiar with the topic at hand, through over 15 years of work as a bilingual

(Spanish–English) professional with organizations and schools that served popu-

lations similar to those at the sites. This stance contributed to what Collins calls a

‘‘creative tension’’ (p. 29). I was aware of my own biography as a source of both

difference and knowledge, one that caused me to take an inquisitive and unassuming

stance towards the study’s topic and the individual participants with whom I spoke.

When I tentatively identified themes, I consulted about them with participants. As I

wrote up my findings, a diverse group of colleagues and mentors reviewed them. In

these ways, I monitored, addressed and gained knowledge from potential sources of

bias due to the differences between myself and this study’s adolescent participants.

Results

Teacher personalism was a complicated package for participants to receive, as

illustrated by Omar’s
3

comments. ‘‘They’re on you,’’ he told me during our first

interview, referring to his team of core subject teachers. ‘‘They actually care, I

guess,’’ he continued, rolling his eyes. ‘‘But it’s annoying sometimes.’’ Omar

identified his teachers’ efforts to know him and push him as caring, but also found it

unpleasant to a certain extent. Data analysis identified two factors that impacted

students’ willingness to engage in relationships with their teachers. These involved

students’ appraisal of teachers’ everyday interactions with them and other students,

and schools’ organizational and institutional contexts. These factors highlighted the

importance of teacher personalism and framed how students interpreted it.

Relationship-Promoting Teacher Practices

To begin, I consider what students described as experiences that led them to want to

work more closely with their teachers, or that discouraged them from doing so. Most

responses strongly resembled themes identified in culturally-responsive pedagogy,

caring and relational trust literature, as illustrated in Table 3.

Teacher practices that evoke culturally-responsive pedagogy include teachers’

knowledge about students’ cultures and communities, as well as specific knowledge

about students. This second type of knowledge could be about either students

themselves or about the groups to which participants perceived themselves to

belong, such as their school, their geographic community or their ethnic group.

Participants mentioned an understanding of students’ daily lives, connections with

family and friends, and current goals and stresses as important components of

effective student–teacher relationships. They described a lack of this knowledge as a

deficit. Leandro, a student who disclosed to me his involvement with a local gang,

said he was wary of teachers who, in his opinion, naively promoted peer mediation

among known gang members. He anticipated that gang members might later be

subject to suspicion or retaliation from peer or rival gang members for participating

in such conversations.

3
All student names are pseudonyms.

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Participants also identified the ‘‘warm demander’’ pedagogy popularized by Ware

(2006). They noted the combination of teacher support and academic press that

several CRP and caring scholars described as essential. Further, they criticized

teachers who held low expectations for their behavior or academic performance,

like Jaime’s previous advisor, who ‘‘said come in, take out your work, she didn’t

talk to us. We had too many parties, didn’t do much work.’’

Bryk and Schneider’s four criteria for the discernment of relational trust (regard,

respect, integrity and competence) also surfaced from interview data. Regard,

defined as caring, a willingness to extend oneself beyond required duties, and

interest in students as individuals, was mentioned most frequently by students as a

factor that helped them gauge the viability of relationships with teachers.

Participants spoke positively of teacher actions like engaging students during

passing periods and providing direct academic support. Conversely, teachers’ lack

of regard, as indicated by arriving late to class or evident disinterest in students’

personal or academic well-being, bode poorly for students’ willingness to engage in

student–teacher relationships.

Interview data also suggested the importance of unconditional positive regard,

popularized by psychotherapist Rogers (1961). When one takes this perspective,

Rogers argues, one accepts the other with no hesitation or qualification.

Unconditional positive regard was particularly important in circumstances (e.g.,

academic failure, disciplinary incidents, outside involvement with the legal system)

Table 3 Relationship-promoting teacher practice, including frequency of students noting practice

Practices noted by students
a

Frequency Example of strong practice

Student-specific knowledge 10 ‘‘Mr. D. understands my life.’’

Knowledge of students’ cultures

and communities

3 ‘‘They know that there’s some discipline with belts and

stuff, they went through it. They know the island

ways. They totally understand where we’re coming

from.’’

Combined support and academic

press (‘‘Warm Demander’’)

8 ‘‘I was really stressed out and I just wanted to give up

and she was on me, like, ‘No, you’re better than this,

you’re going to do this, I don’t care what you say.’

Even though I didn’t want to she still pushed me. I like

that.’’

Regard 28 ‘‘They’re more interested in what you think, how to

make it easier for you, and how to work with you.’’

Respect 19 ‘‘He gives me a lot of space and just listens to what I

have to say.’’

Competence 16 ‘‘He made everything fun, but at the same time you get

your work done. It stays in your head.’’

‘‘He knows how to connect with teenagers.’’

Integrity 21 ‘‘She doesn’t have two faces. Outside of class, she’s a

friend. Inside of class, she’s a friend.’’

Academic support 12 ‘‘They help me, talk more clearly and they offer me

more help. Then I understand the work.’’

a
Practices noted by students include positive and negative incidences (e.g., respect and lack of respect)

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where students had done something that others might criticize. When I asked Essie

to tell me how she knew a teacher cared about her, she told me about her advisor’s

response to her spending 3-months in juvenile hall. ‘‘She tried to come visit me,’’

she explained. ‘‘When I got back she helped me catch up with school, and she was

just there.’’ Her advisor continually reached out to her and offered her support

during this time, unlike others, whom Essie said backed away from her under her

strained circumstances.

Participants also emphasized the importance of respect to student–teacher

relationships. They specifically mentioned respect for their privacy and agency.

Most responses that student participants gave involved either wishes about what

teachers would do that would show respect towards them (‘‘Help us, guide us, just

show us the way and let us figure it out, and if we don’t, then that’s on us,’’) or

accounts of teachers demonstrating what they considered a lack of respect towards

them (‘‘They’re trying to know my business’’). Perceived teacher competence

concerned instructional skills, organization and ability to communicate and connect

with students (as particularly noted in students’ observations of their assigned

advisors, whose job it was to connect with them). Integrity also emerged from the

data. Bryk and Schneider define integrity as acting in a child’s best interest, which

expands upon the idea of integrity as adherence to a code of moral values.

Participants noticed consistency between teachers’ words and their actions, their

fairness and actions that supported rather than damaged students (‘‘Don’t do nothing

that would hurt him.’’).

Finally, a number of students mentioned the importance of receiving basic

academic support from teachers: explaining work clearly, supporting how students

are doing in their classes, offering help when necessary, and showing patience in the

face of student confusion. This finding highlights the importance of strong

instruction in establishing student–teacher relationships. In addition, it resembles

Garza’s finding (2009) that Latino students valued and preferred academic support

over social-emotional support.

Knowledge of Teacher Practices Through Interaction and Observation

Participants’ assessed not only teachers’ direct, individual interactions with them,

but also what they saw teachers doing with other students. Lupe, for example, told

me that she felt comfortable with her advisor after watching her interact with other

students in her advisory class.

Sometimes she takes us outside, and we say, Ms. Saenz, how you been, what’s

your life, and she says, ‘Come on girls, do this, don’t do that.’ And that’s how,

I was like, okay, the other girls could, what’s it called? Trust on her.

Similarly, participants noted when teachers helped students outside of class hours

(e.g., lunch, after school), whether or not students chose to work with them at those

times. Participants also noticed how teachers treated other students during tense

moments. Janeth, who hadn’t had any conflicts with her advisor (Ms. McFerrin),

still knew how Ms. McFerrin worked with students when conflicts arose: ‘‘When a

kid is mad, she will give him a break, and then talk to him outside of class.’’ As a

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result of such observations, Janeth knew Ms. McFerrin’s interactional style and

knew what to expect from her. This finding is consistent with Bryk and Schneider’s

claim that ‘‘relational trust is rooted in a complex cognitive activity of discerning

the intentions of others’’ (p. 22). It also suggests that students have the option to

manage the potential vulnerability of a relationship with a teacher by gathering

information about them before engaging directly with them.

Congruence and Tension Between Practices of Personalism

At times, these teacher practices could be highly congruent with one another. Warm

demander pedagogy, academic support and integrity, for example, clearly concern

similar, often identical, behaviors. At other times, these practices existed in tension

with one another. Teachers’ efforts to learn about students sometimes conflicted

with student preferences and cultural norms about discussing personal matters.

When teachers pursued what they thought best for students, students sometimes felt

like their wishes were devalued. Josué walked out of a meeting in tears after his

guidance counselor refused to let him transfer to an alternative school where he

could more easily make up credits towards graduation. His counselor may have

based her decision on knowledge of the other school’s drawbacks or a desire to keep

Josué engaged at his current school, arguably in his best interest. Josué, however,

perceived from his counselor’s actions that ‘‘nobody listens,’’ a lack of respect for

his concerns and priorities, which he said was instrumental in his decision to

ultimately stop attending school. In this instance, his counselor’s practice of

personalism (acting in Josué’s best interest) conflicted with the kind of personalism

(a demonstration of respect) that Josué wanted. The congruence, or match among

personalism-oriented educator practices as described above seems obvious and

intuitive. The tension, however, between practices of personalism, as suggested by

Josué’s negative experience, merits further inquiry. These tensions threatened

student–teacher relationships, and thereby had the potential to undermine the goals

of teacher personalism. How could educators’ practices of personalism work against
student–teacher relationships? I next consider the school environment’s contribu-

tions to these tensions.

Tensions Related to Teacher Personalism in Small Schools

Certain school-level strategies that promoted personalism also contributed to

tension between students and teachers. Below, I describe these strategies as I

identified them at King, Los Robles and Western. I then consider the tensions that

emerged out of schools’ and teachers’ efforts to create personalism: students’

concerns about privacy and student agency in their relationships with teachers.

Strategies of Personalism in Small Schools

In keeping with the broader small schools movement, King, Los Robles and

Western all attempted to build personalism into students’ daily experiences. At each

school, students attended an advisory class where they and a group of 10–20 peers

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met with an assigned advisor. This arrangement is common among small high

schools (Gewertz 2007; Makkonen 2004). Advisors followed students for 2 years at

Western, and 4 years at the other schools. Besides advisory, schools had other

strategies in place to encourage student–teacher relationships. These included block

scheduling (at Western and Los Robles), sub-school houses where core area

teachers shared a group of approximately 75 students (Western), regularly

scheduled meetings where groups of teachers discussed student issues (Western

and King), required faculty supervision of passing periods, recess and bus boarding

(Los Robles), faculty-supervised peer mediation (Los Robles) and teacher-

supervised, after-school academic support (all three schools). Advisors at Los

Robles also received students whose teachers had sent them out of class for

misbehavior and coordinated the assignment of consequences. Teachers connected

with students, per participant report, through coaching and supervising other

activities, such as the school yearbook. Overall, educators had rich, multifaceted

opportunities to interact with and learn about their students.

Ayers’ appeal that ‘‘in small schools every student must be known well by some

caring adult’’ (2000, p. 5) was a reality in these schools, according to many of this

study’s participants. Of the 29 participants who participated in final interviews,
4

23

named an adult at school who knew them well. Of those 23, 11 named their advisor.

Both the strategies identified by participants and these particular results show that

teachers used relationship-promoting practice and that most student participants

responded to it. Were it not for the tensions described by participants, one could

readily conclude that policies of personalism worked precisely as intended by

educators.

Privacy Amidst Personalism

At King, Los Robles and Western, schools that intentionally chose to pursue

personalism, student privacy proved evasive at times. Policies, programs and

practices that promoted personalism created multiple opportunities for educators to

learn about their students as well as their friends, siblings, cousins and significant

others. These efforts to know their students well could also eclipse student privacy.

Student participants noticed the ease with which their teachers could learn about

them. 22 participants reported experiences, both positive and negative, with teachers

and sensitive personal information. All 22 expressed the importance of teachers

respecting their privacy. Miguél experienced tension about his own privacy right

away at Western. ‘‘The first day I got here teachers already knew my name. I didn’t

know nothing about them and they acted like they knew me.’’ What teachers may

have intended as showing interest, Miguél perceived as uncomfortably familiar.

Students also expressed concern about teachers exchanging information about them.

‘‘They (teachers) just come up to me, well I guess they heard something about me,’’

Nalani said about teachers revealing to her that they knew sensitive information

about her that she hadn’t shared directly with them. She responded to these

4
Six participants had either left their schools or were absent during the days when I conducted final

interviews, and could not be reached by phone.

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experiences with dismay. ‘‘I’m like, huh? This is none of your business.’’

Participants knew that information about them might travel among adults at the

school. They noticed whether teachers protected or disclosed personal information

and judged what they said in future conversations accordingly. Xiomara said that

she trusted Ms. Saenz more after Ms. Saenz learned that she’d missed school for a

Planned Parenthood appointment, and had not told other teachers or her parents.

Students’ concerns about privacy extended to conversations where adults had

assured their confidentiality. Participants who attended counseling at school said

that they were informed about confidentiality guidelines and limitations, but those

not participating lacked this information and seemed unsure about their potential

privacy. Anselmo expressed discomfort with the privacy of mental health services at

his school. ‘‘People would tell me to go talk to her (counselor), but I don’t really

want to. I know she might say things are confidential but a lot of teachers here, staff

here, tells everyone everything, and it gets around.’’ At schools where faculty

(including, at times, mental health professionals) had multiple responsibilities, knew

each other well, knew a lot about students, and appeared to exchange student

information freely, privacy concerns sometimes overrode students’ interest in

getting additional support. Eddie’s principal, Ms. Franklin, learned sensitive

information about him when she mediated a conflict between him and another

student, and had promised to keep that information confidential. Eddie was

surprised, then, to hear Ms. Franklin share this information with his mother when

the three of them met to discuss a serious disciplinary incident.

I told her (Ms. Franklin) I thought this was confidential, I thought you won’t

say nothing. ‘‘Oh, but, I’m just telling your mom.’’ But you weren’t supposed

to tell nobody. I ain’t telling nobody, he ain’t telling nobody, why you got to

tell anybody?

Eddie’s response to his principal’s breach of confidentiality, in his words, was to

withdraw from all adults at the school: ‘‘It’s not the same no more. I talk (to adults),

but not that much.’’ During a period when adults at his school had serious academic

and safety concerns about him, Eddie distanced himself from them. Tension created

by a breach of privacy impaired these student–teacher relationships. The intimate

environment of the small school at times overrode agreements of confidentiality,

both in students’ expectations and in educators’ practice. Personalism’s strained

relationship with student privacy, in these cases, had a paradoxically negative

impact on students’ relationships with educators.

Student Agency and Student–Teacher Relationships

While many participants developed relationships with teachers, they also expressed

concern about the amount of agency they had amidst teachers’ push to enact

personalism. Participants at times felt pressured to engage in relationships that they

did not necessarily want or did not consider authentic. Advisors were literally

assigned to know students well. Yet some participants felt that advisors acted as if
they knew them well before developing an authentic relationship with them.

Advisors reviewed advisees’ grades, facilitated their parent–teacher conferences (at

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Los Robles and Western), and often coordinated staff intervention for advisees

when problems arose at school. Schools required advisors to know a lot about their

advisees. Participants understood this role, and often appreciated having teachers

who wanted to know and help them, but some felt pressed into relationships with

advisors. 17 participants said that they did not like discussing personal matters with

teachers. When asked about her feelings about sharing personal information with

her advisor or other teachers, Essie replied, ‘‘I just don’t think it’s necessary for a

school person to know.’’ Participants often named supportive friends or family

members to whom they preferred to turn for support. Namond felt, though, that he

had limited say about what information he shared with his teachers, explaining that

his advisor ‘‘keeps on asking and asking again. He always asks about little things so

it really doesn’t seem like we have a choice.’’ Jaime discussed stresses in his family

with a teacher who was not his advisor, someone with whom he’d developed a

positive relationship. He said that if this teacher shared this sensitive information

with his advisor, ‘‘I’d never tell her (the teacher) that again.’’

Participants wanted to pace their relationships with their advisors, and did not

respond very well to expectations to discuss school issues or personal information

on command. Cleo vividly illustrates this perspective: ‘‘If a teacher would be getting

on me about that I would tell them to back off. I would get really pissed off if

they’re up in my face over things that don’t concern them.’’ When advisors pushed

for relationships because they were assigned that role, students did not always

cooperate, or, contrary to the goals of personalism, retreated from them.

Rather than relationships mandated by teachers’ roles, participants wanted

relationships created by mutual knowledge. I learned of this wish by hearing

participants describe both ideal experiences and negative experiences. Deirdra

advocated for teachers’ more gradual approach in student–teacher relationships, as

demonstrated by her advice to a hypothetical teacher attempting to help a student

having problems.

I would say don’t ask it directly. Don’t just go, ‘‘WHY ARE YOU NOT

COMING TO SCHOOL?’’ Or, ‘‘I SEEN YOU GETTING IN A FIGHT,

WHAT’S WRONG?’’ Just ease into the situation. First try to build up a

relationship with them so they know they could trust you and if they trust you

then they’re going to come to you with all this information. You probably

won’t even have to ask if you have a trust that good, they’ll probably be like,

‘‘Oh I trust them so much I’m just gonna tell them my situation,’’ versus, ‘‘Oh

I don’t really know that teacher. I’m not gonna come up and tell them

everything.’’

Deirdra distinguishes between immediate, required, teacher-directed connection

and a more gradual, organic, mutual connection between students and teachers,

clearly favoring the latter. Her distinction resounds with Noddings’ (2005)

insistence that teacher caring is only meaningful when students reciprocate it.

Ms. Bruce, Deirdra’s advisor, had recently learned from Deirdra’s grandmother that

Deirdra’s biological mother was homeless, a frequent drug user and had been

diagnosed with HIV. When I asked Ms. Bruce whether she had discussed this matter

with Deirdra, she said, as if following Deirdra’s suggestions: ‘‘I would like her to

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share it with me herself.’’ In both Deirdra’s and Ms. Bruce’s words, one can see a

vision of a solid relational footing that creates a path upon which teachers could

make such forays. Without it, teachers attempting personalism came across to

students, in participants’ words, as ‘‘trying to figure out what’s wrong with me,’’

‘‘looking for information,’’ ‘‘interrogating,’’ or ‘‘trying to bust into other people’s

information.’’ Such student perceptions suggest teachers’ strategic or instrumental

interest, rather than an authentic interest, in them. Such experiences ran counter to

participants’ sense of teachers’ trying to promote their well-being. While

participants rarely expressed direct opposition to their teachers’ efforts to develop

relationships with them, they did experience tensions around how teachers managed

and pursued these relationships.

Teacher Personalism’s Institutional and Societal Contexts

The findings discussed above suggest that schools’ and teachers’ pursuit of

personalism surfaced significant tensions with students from nondominant groups. It

is important to consider these practices in their sociocultural and institutional

contexts. Small or not, schools are part of, and associated with, other institutions

that have not always inspired nondominant groups’ confidence.

Participants who experienced unwanted intervention by institutions other than

schools, either directly, in their immediate circle of family members and friends, or

in their broader communities, often expressed wariness of schools’ reach into their

personal lives. For example, all participants understood that teachers are mandated

reporters of suspected abuse. Nina, who had called the police years ago during a

domestic dispute between her parents, told me she did not tell any adult at school

about her parents’ pending divorce. She feared additional intervention and the

increased family distress it might cause. ‘‘If a teacher finds out what is happening

with a student at home,’’ she explained, ‘‘then they tell the police and some other

people, and then they go look at the home.’’ Other participants told me they had

first-hand experiences with such intervention. While educators’ responsibility to

protect children is both important and complex, it occurs amidst the reality of

disproportionate intervention by child protective services in the lives of low-income

youth and youth of color (Derezotes et al. 2005; Fluke et al. 2003). Participants

connected sharing personal information with teachers to their vulnerability to

outside institutional intervention.

Discomfort over sharing information with teachers may also be connected to

immigration status, given that 63% of the participants either were children of

immigrants or immigrated to the US themselves. At the time of data collection,

national discourse and policy about immigration included workplace and commu-

nity raids, increased US border patrol and immigrants withdrawing their children

from school due to concerns about potential deportation (Associated Press 2007;

Fernández-Kelly and Massey 2008; Zehr 2008). While no student specifically

mentioned immigration concerns, this discourse and these policies are relevant to

immigrant students’ perspectives on school employees requesting personal infor-

mation, in as much as discourse imbeds itself in practice and vice versa (Bourdieu

1972; Foucault 1985).

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Other students encountered law enforcement officers, and not always in a

positive light. When Miguél’s teacher disclosed to other teachers information he’d

shared with her about girlfriend problems, he equated her response with his

experiences with police and probation officers (following a recent arrest). ‘‘She tried

to talk to me, explaining that she didn’t mean it that way, she was just concerned,

you know, like the nice police way, the law way.’’ His teacher’s concern, in

Miguél’s experience, closely resembled his experiences of police and probation

officers as invasive and exerting unilateral control. The overlap between person-

alism and law enforcement proved even stronger for Eddie, who experienced police

intervention at school, initiated by school personnel. During this intervention, police

officers watched while a teacher searched him. The officers then searched his wallet

and his backpack, making jokes about his sexuality. ‘‘I had a picture of my girlfriend

and then I had a condom in my backpack,’’ Eddie explained, expressing dislike of

how he was treated. ‘‘They started saying if I use this condom on my girlfriend.’’

Regardless of Eddie’s or the school’s culpability in his negative experience with

these particular police officers, his school was now also involved in direct and

indirect interactions with him and authorities whom he did not trust.

While most participants said they liked their current schools, many also had

reasons to mistrust schools in general. This diffuse mistrust rendered teacher

personalism suspect. Two of this study’s three schools had faced district attempts to

remove their school from its current building. One of these attempts succeeded, after

a season of complaints from the surrounding high-SES neighborhood about student

noise and behavior. Many faculty and students interpreted these complaints as

racialized. Both attempts illustrated the potential for students to experience schools

as places that did not meet their needs, or worse, undermined efforts to meet them

(Fine et al. 2004 and Kirshner et al. 2010, present this same perspective).

Schools’ attempts to promote strong student–teacher relationships occurred

amidst a history of nondominant groups’ uncomfortable, and often outright

subjugated, relationships with governmental institutions over time. While schools

and teachers attempted, often skillfully and sensitively, to build these relationships,

students navigated these efforts in a context rife with reasons to mistrust educators

and governmental institutions. Neither organizational design nor best teacher

practices, alone, could overcome the tensions created by a push for personalism.

A Staged Model of Student–Teacher Relationships

Along with best practices and stubborn tensions they identified in this study,

participants’ comments also point towards a way towards personalism that

acknowledges their experiences and preferences. Participants wanted to observe

educators’ behavior and to exercise choice about when and to what extent they

engaged in relationships with them. Sociocultural and institutional contexts that

both discourage student trust and magnify its importance also factored significantly

into the patterns of responses to teacher personalism. Taken together, these

responses suggest a staged model of student–teacher relationships, as illustrated in

Fig. 1.

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This figure illustrates how students preferred to observe and interact with

teachers prior to more intense teacher interventions, such as talking with them about

serious issues in their academic or personal lives. Maya’s comment sums up this

illustration: ‘‘I think you have to gain a relationship with that kid before you start

asking about their personal life and stuff.’’ Participants described an initial period of

lower engagement with teachers, where they noted teachers’ qualities and styles of

interacting with them and with others at school, before deciding to engage in more

substantive relationships. These interactions did not involve intense personal or

academic issues, but rather everyday matters of teaching and learning. When

teachers engaged with students outside of academic instruction, such as during

passing periods and extracurricular activities, students continued to learn about their

teachers. In this stage of relationship-building, students gauged teachers’ trustwor-

thiness and relational capacity. When intervention or inquiry followed after earlier

stages of observation and interaction, it was less likely to be described as premature.

With trust established, students found teacher’s efforts to connect with them

reasonable, rather than perplexing and perhaps unwelcome.

This proposed model characterizes effective intervention and inquiry as a

possible result of building a relationship with a student, not the beginning of

building a relationship with a student. Educators cannot always choose when they

must ask intensive questions, or intervene in a student’s academic or personal life.

Urgent academic and personal situations rarely follow a schedule. Still, when

teachers already established relational trust, students showed greater receptiveness

to teachers’ forays into their lives. No participant explicitly described this approach

to developing relationships as a culture-based practice. Still, it appears culturally

synchronized, in Irvine’s words (1990), because it matches the relational pace that

seemed comfortable for the majority of adolescent students from nondominant

groups in this study. This study’s design and methods make it impossible to

determine whether the preference for a more modest relational pace is one that

specifically or exclusively relates to participants’ sociocultural, political and

institutional experiences. Nonetheless, the promotion of trust prior to the initiation

of more intense forms of intervention is compatible with participants’ reported

preferences and experiences.

Fig. 1 Staged model of student–teacher relationships

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Limitations

This article’s data come from a larger study with specific selection criteria, and as a

result present certain limitations. I selected participants for the larger study who

both showed signs of social-emotional strain and were also low-income students of

color in small high schools. This strategy provided a powerful opportunity to

understand how student–teacher relationships worked in settings where students

were likely to be targeted for developing these same relationships. This selection

strategy also limits my ability to generalize the study’s findings beyond this specific

population. While diverse in age, ethnicity, immigration history and academic

status, the participants do not represent all students of color, all lower-SES students,

or students who attend other types of high schools. Further, it is not possible to

determine whether participants’ responses to teacher personalism differed substan-

tially from students from other demographic groups, since other groups were not

represented in this study. These limitations illuminate pathways for future research

that can further specify the interpersonal and social processes involved in student–

teacher relationships.

Summary and Implications

Above, I report on a study of how youth from nondominant groups responded to

their schools’ press for intensified student–teacher relationships. Participants in this

study, all students at small, urban high schools, identified specific teacher practices

that motivated them to engage in relationships with teachers. These practices are

highly consistent with existing research on culturally-responsive pedagogy, teacher

caring and relational trust in schools. Participating schools’ sociocultural and

institutional contexts, which often discouraged student trust of schools in general,

further framed the need for a staged development of student–teacher relationships.

In this staged approach, less interpersonally demanding interactions, like student

observation of teachers and every day classroom interaction with teachers, precede

interactions that involve teachers’ more intesnsive intervention and inquiry with

students. These findings inform implications for the practice and policy of

personalism.

This study’s findings extend and develop the body of research literature on the

importance of student–teacher relationships to young people. Principally, this study

highlights how policies and practices of personalism can promote student–teacher

relationships but can also remain insufficient for achieving them. Participants

indicated a willingness to engage in relationships with teachers who used specific

practices, such as regard for students and combined high expectations and support,

and a disinclination to engage with teachers who showed the opposite of these

practices. This stand-alone finding suggests that teacher education that promotes

culturally-responsive pedagogy ought to include more explicit discussion of

student–teacher relationships. Further, these discussions would benefit from

engaging the literature on interpersonal trust in schools, which could both enhance

learners’ understandings of optimal practices and how such practices relate to K-12

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students’ broader educational and social contexts. This article represents an initial

contribution to the bridging of CRP and relational trust literature in the interest of

enhancing teacher learning about student–teacher relationships. Relational practice

training has been found lacking in teacher education as compared with other helping

professions’ training programs (Grossman et al. 2007). This article expands the

field’s knowledge beyond the importance of student–teacher relationships, as

specified in student–teacher relationship outcome research (e.g., Erickson et al.

2009), by contributing evidence of what specific practices promote such relation-

ships in the first place.

Still, findings about teacher practice are never merely stand-alone. The

participants whose experiences and perspectives inform this article did not respond

just to teachers and their practice but rather to their teachers, set in schools, set in

communities, set in American society. Well-received teacher practices intentionally

or unintentionally responded to participants’ nested contexts, achieving a degree of

synchronization with them. This finding suggests that personalism works best when

it acknowledges and engages students’ sociocultural and institutional contexts. It

also suggests that schools or districts that establish policies of personalism—such as

advisory programs, lower-enrollment schools or sub-school house groupings of

students and teachers—should not expect student–teacher relationships to spring

forth from these policies. In fact, these policies may backfire if implemented in

ways that fail to engage or recognize students’ needs and desires, or worse, may

alienate them, as was sometimes the case with participants’ experiences of loss of

privacy, lack of agency and teachers’ premature press for relationships. Implemen-

tation support that promotes context-responsive personalism, such as guidance for

teachers on the development of relationships and transparent, youth-accessible

guidelines about how educators can and cannot share student information within

schools, might head off well-intentioned but misguided practice (e.g., Rolón-Dow

2005; Toshalis 2011) that strives but fails to establish authentic, supportive student–

teacher relationships. Given that recent research (Phillippo 2010; Shiller 2009)

suggests that teachers in small schools do not necessarily intuit how to carry out

more intense student–teacher relationships, and can find this aspect of their work

stressful, such guidance could support implementation in ways that would lead to

more informed practice.

Clearly, such guidance would require attunement to the unique groups of students

in schools and districts. Educators and policymakers must recognize their student

bodies’ characteristics, experiences and contexts when designing interventions that

promote interpersonal relationships between students and their teachers. This study

illustrates that well-intended but uninterrogated policies of personalism can have

positive results, but that they can also create tensions that ultimately undermine

student–teacher relationships. More critical, context-sensitive approaches to teacher

personalism, however, promise to address these tensions so that strong relational

practices can reach students. Under such circumstances, teacher personalism

promises to promote student–teacher relationships and, in turn, student achievement.

Acknowledgments This research was funded in part by the Spencer Foundation’s Research Training
Grant and Dissertation Grant. The author wishes to thank the following individuals for their comments on

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earlier versions of this manuscript: Robert Ream, James Spillane, Jennifer Jennings, Elizabeth McGhee

Hassrick, René Antrop-González, Leanne Kallemeyn, Bridget Kelly, Ann Marie Ryan and Anita Thomas.

The author is also grateful to The Urban Review’s anonymous reviewers for their very helpful
suggestions.

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• ‘‘You’re Trying to Know Me’’: Students from Nondominant Groups Respond to Teacher Personalism

Abstract
Research Problem and Rationale: Policies of Personalism
Review of Literature Related to Teacher Personalism
Student–Teacher Relationship Outcome Studies
Culturally-Responsive Pedagogy
Teacher Caring
Relational Trust in Schools
Research Questions
Study Design and Methodology
Participant Selection
Data Collection Methods
Data Analysis and Interpretation
Results
Relationship-Promoting Teacher Practices
Knowledge of Teacher Practices Through Interaction and Observation
Congruence and Tension Between Practices of Personalism
Tensions Related to Teacher Personalism in Small Schools
Strategies of Personalism in Small Schools
Privacy Amidst Personalism
Student Agency and Student–Teacher Relationships
Teacher Personalism’s Institutional and Societal Contexts
A Staged Model of Student–Teacher Relationships
Limitations
Acknowledgments
References