Abstract

Though interaction between teachers and students plays a significant role, both in relation to adolescents' school experience, and particularly in relation to their acquisition of an adult identity and their total insertion into social life, few studies from the perspective of the teachers have been done. The aim of this research is thus to investigate certain aspects of the relation between teachers and students from the perspective of the former. By means of an innovative conceptual approach, we have investigated how teachers' perception and evaluations of students and their behaviour towards students are organised in reference to indicative criteria of connection /inclusion (interpersonal level) vs. distance/exclusion (intergroup level) and in what way these perceptions and evaluations influence how the teachers behave towards the students. For this purpose an original questionnaire was given to 319 teachers of different levels and types of school. The main results show that while perception of the students is not organised on criteria which are univocal but instead partly indicative of connection/inclusion and partly of distance/exclusion, the evaluation of the relationship with them and the behaviour shown towards them instead indicate the predominance of an orientation towards connection/inclusion. Thus, while perceiving the students as "willing and sensitive", "ambitious an competent" and feeling considered and satisfied by them, predict behaviour of the "connection/inclusion" type, seeing them as "superficial, lazy and rude", instead predict behaviour of the "distance/exclusion" type.