You Can Get Some Blood from a Turnip: K12 Teachers’ Perceptions of their Pre-Pandemic Relationships with their Students and Strategies they used to Nurture and Develop their Relationships with Students in the Online Classes

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led K12 school leaders in the United States of America to make the unprecedented move to pivot from face-to-face to online classes, a move that was challenging for both teachers and students. Research shows that student-teacher and student-student relationships are crucial for student learning. There is much research on strategies to develop relationships in online classes in higher education, but scant research on relationship building in K12 online classes. This dissertation study sought to answer three questions: What were teachers’ perceptions of their relationships with their students prior to the start of remote learning in March of 2020? What strategies have teachers used to form relationships with their students in an online context? Were teachers who perceived that they had good relationships with their students in face-to-face classes before the pandemic more likely to incorporate strategies to develop and nurture relationships with their students during online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic? The survey results showed that teachers perceived that their relationships with their students were not strong prior to the pandemic. However, even though there was a slight tendency for teachers with strong relationships with their students prior to the pandemic to try more relationship-building strategies in their online classes during the pandemic, overall, most teachers tried very hard regardless of their perceptions of their relationships with their students, and many teachers tried unprecedented strategies to connect with their students during the pandemic.