Social perspective taking: A professional development induction to improve teacher–student relationships and student learning.

Abstract

When teachers struggle to understand students’ thoughts, feelings, and motivations, the teacher–student relationship typically suffers. Better social perspective taking—understanding the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others—should facilitate these relationships. In this preregistered field experiment, teachers (N = 105) from a kindergarten-to-ninth-grade charter school network participated in a new social perspective-taking induction aimed at helping them better understand their most perplexing students. Regression analyses showed that the induction caused treatment teachers to put more effort into understanding these students (Cohen’s d = .51) and perceive more positive (Cohen’s d = .41) and less negative (Cohen’s d = −.52) relationships with these students. Meanwhile, students of treatment teachers perceived more positivity in their relationships with their teachers (Cohen’s d = .82) and obtained higher course competency scores (akin to grades; Cohen’s d = .45). This preregistered study complements exploratory, laboratory-based studies with empirical evidence from real-world classroom settings. Implications of this research center on the promise of social perspective taking to improve teacher–student relationships and other important student outcomes.

The pedagogical foundations of student voice practices: The role of relationships, differentiation, and choice in supporting student voice practices in high school classrooms

“…Additionally, this study suggests that teacher educators and administrators should continue to encourage teachers to build strong relationships with their students, differentiate instruction, and provide students with choice, as these practices provide a relational and pedagogical foundation for SVPs. A great deal of previous research has identified professional learning programs and supports that can help educators hone their relational skills ( Conner et al, 2023b ; Duong et al, 2019 ; Gehlbach et al, 2023 ; Kennedy & Haydon, 2021 ), their facility with differentiation ( De Neve & Devos, 2017; Smets et al, 2020 ), and their approach to autonomy support in the classroom ( Reeve et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, some research suggests that increasing teacher job satisfaction (e.g., Cheon et al, 2020 ), need satisfaction (e.g.…”

How We Understand Others: A Theory of How Social Perspective Taking Unfolds

“…Learning which interventions are sticky enough to persist over time will be of particular interest. However, learning which interventions are so strong that targets detect differences in their interactions with perceivers may be an even more compelling outcome (e.g., Gehlbach et al, 2022).…”

“…Finally, as our literature review shows, our model builds from extensive wisdom accumulated from laboratory studies that signal how SPT can improve numerous outcomes. We complement these past efforts with a model focused on how SPT attempts may play out in real-world situations, bearing in mind that the extent to which knowledge from these studies generalizes to real-world interactions is ultimately an empirical question (Gehlbach et al, 2022).…”