Social relationships to stimulate students’ learning

Graduation from upper-secondary school is increasingly important for students’ future employment and lives, and students dropping out of upper-secondary school is a significant problem. Previous research has shown that relational pedagogy can positively influence school attendance and graduation. This study aims to contextualize teachers’ perceptions of social relationships in upper-secondary schools to find out how consciously working with social relations can stimulate learning in upper-secondary education. A theoretical framework based on relational pedagogy, were used to analyse and understand the empirical data. The data sources were focus group interviews with teachers, and a directed content analysis was used to address the research questions. The results show that the teachers expressed that positive relationships between teachers and students are significant students’ well-being, trust and school attendance. The overall conclusion is that, according to the participants, these factors all affect students’ learning, results, grades, and final graduation.