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. 2022 Jun;92(2):e12457.
doi: 10.1111/bjep.12457. Epub 2021 Sep 8.

How Do I Get on With my Teacher? Affective Student-Teacher Relationships and the Religious Match Between Students and Teachers in Islamic Primary Schools

Fatima Zohra Charki  1 , Lisette Hornstra  1 , Jochem Thijs  2
Affiliations

How Do I Get on With my Teacher? Affective Student-Teacher Relationships and the Religious Match Between Students and Teachers in Islamic Primary Schools

Fatima Zohra Charki et al. Br J Educ Psychol. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

Background: Despite the growing body of research concerning affective relationships between teachers and ethnic minority students, very little is known about student-teacher relationship (STR) quality for religious minority students. Many Islamic schools have a mixed workforce consisting of both Muslim and non-Muslim teachers. This means that the quality of religiously congruent and religiously incongruent STRs can be directly compared.

Aims: We investigated whether the quality of the STR experienced by Dutch Islamic school students depended on the religious background of their teacher (Muslim vs. non-Muslim). We also examined the role of teachers' implicitly measured attitudes towards Muslims as a possible explanation for differences in relationship quality.

Sample: Participants were 707 students (56.9% female) from 35 classes (Grade 3-6) (Mage = 10.02 years, SD = 1.25) and their 35 teachers (85.7% female; Mage = 32.94 years, SD = 6.37).

Methods: Students reported on the quality of the relationship with their teacher (closeness, conflict, and negative expectations), and teachers' implicit attitude towards Muslims (vs. non-Muslims) was measured with an Implicit Association Test.

Results: Students reported relatively high levels of closeness and low levels of conflict and negative expectations for both Muslim and non-Muslim teachers. Conflict was slightly higher in religiously incongruent STRs, but only when teachers' implicitly measured attitude towards Muslims (vs. non-Muslims) was included in our model.

Conclusion: Results of this study indicate that religious incongruence does not play a major role in STR quality in Islamic primary education.

Keywords: Islamic schools; Muslim children; attitude; religious incongruence; student-teacher relationship; teachers.

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Conflict of interest statement

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Multilevel path model predicting closeness, conflict, and negative expectations, from teachers’ religion and implicit attitudes (unstandardized estimates at the between level). Note: Non‐significant paths, covariates, error terms, and covariances are not depicted
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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