Attachment perspective on the teacher-student relationship – results of a Hungarian study

Abstract

While previously educational research focused on the cognitive aspect, nearly 60 years ago the situation has changed and the investigation of affective factors of learning became important in the international research and in the last two decades in Hungary too (Józsa és Fejes, 2012). There are few Hungarian researches that investigate school attachment (eg Szabó and Virányi, 2011) and teacherstudent bond (Zsolnai, 2018) but close teacher-student relationship is probably the most important factor of effective education (Sava, 2002). It influences students’ personal development and school success (eg Sabol and Pianta, 2012) and not only in early childhood but in adolescence as well (Verschueren, 2015).
In the first part of the study the concept and content of attachment are defined, and next, the different interpretations of student-teacher relationship are discussed. This is followed by an analysis of assessment tools and a description of measurement practices. Finaly we introduce the first Hungarian data of a widely used pedagogical perception-based instrument (Pianta, 2001).