Chinese Language Teachers’ stories of Teacher-student Relationships in a Multicultural Context

Proceedings of ‏The 3rd International Conference on Research in Education

Year: 2021

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/3rd.icreconf.2021.03.161

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Chinese Language Teachers’ stories of Teacher-student Relationships in a Multicultural Context

Chan Rainbow Rung

ABSTRACT: 

Researches have identified the importance of teacher-student relationship building to students’ learning motivation, academic achievement, and teachers’ well-being. Looking into Hong Kong context, Chinese language teachers tried various ways to build affective relationships with their students with multi-cultural background to help them adopt life in Hong Kong and learn Chinese more effectively. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships with multi-cultural students at risk and to capture the view on teacher-child relationships by eliciting information from teachers through interviews. The research questions were conveyed from Rytivaara & Frelin (2017) and amended with the context in Hong Kong to study: (1) How do the teachers narrate their relationships with their multi-cultural students? (2) How do the teachers narrate other adults regarding the multi-cultural students? (3) How do the teachers narrate change in their relationships with their multi-cultural students? Data for this study were drawn from 4 Non-Chinese speaking Students Development Officers from primary schools and secondary schools. Narrative analysis was applied to analyze the teachers’ stories. It was found that positive teacher-student relationships shared the characteristics of peer relationship and family relationship, and the interaction with other stakeholders affected relationship building. In addition, the quality of teacher-student relationship will also affect the well-being and job satisfaction of teachers. Implications on teacher training and support network were reported in the findings. This research was expected to fill the research gap of researching teacher-student relationship with regard to the unique situation in Hong Kong with Chinese language teachers teaching multi-cultural students.

Keywords: narrative; second-language; at-risk; collaboration; affect.