The Impact of Teacher Relationships and Interactions on Self-Development and Motivation

Abstract

This article stresses the importance of teachers’ relationships and interactions in impacting students’ self-development and motivation through elicitation of students’ higher, agentic self. Highlighted is an intervention based on the mental health model of Suarez, Mills, and Stewart (1987) as it interacts with the will, skill, and social support model of McCombs and Whisler (1989). Here will is an innate state of motivation that transcends self-beliefs, leading to metacognitive awareness and higher level understandings, mediated by affect; skill is learned cognitive or metacognitive competency that develops with training and/or practice; and social support is the socioemotional support provided by adults, producing a critical context within which youths’ higher level of consciousness (agentic self) is elicited.