Abstract:

Why do some students in our classes feel frustrated about the school, have little connection with school life, and have no motivation to learn and to participate overall? It is possible that we as teachers and parents encounter school alienation. This is a multifaced phenomenon, that could occur during the school year and have negative effects on students’ sociopsychological well-being, academic performance, and/or future career trajectories.
According to Hascher’s & Hadjar’s (2018) theoretical conceptualization, school alienation can manifest itself in one, several, or in all three fields of students’ school life: a) teacher-student relation, b) student-student relation, c) student-learning activity relation. In this paper, we focus on teacher-student relation as the primary relation in the school setting or learning activity and ask what good teachers do in their pedagogical practice that prevents school alienation to occur.
In this paper, we present some findings from wider dissertational research that examines the problem of school alienation. The pooled population of the twelfth-grade-student respondents (n=227) from three Lithuanian secondary schools was used for the application of Morinaj, Hadjar & Hascher (2020) diagnostic-quantitative instrument during the 2022/23 school year to detect school alienation cases. Fourteen respondents were selected who indicated high (7) and low (7) alienation in their relationships with teachers, and semi-structured interviews were carried out with them. The aim of the study was to explore school alienation by employing a qualitative methodological approach and to gain a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. The comparison of alienated and non-alienated students’ experiences allowed us to have a wider picture of teachers’ role in school alienation.
The revealed diversity of pedagogical experiences confirmed the theoretical assumptions that alienation is an individual and multifaceted phenomenon. Research has also revealed that according to students’ experiences, the everyday pedagogical practice of the teacher has vital importance in creating a trustful, respectful relationship whit a student, which helps to prevent school alienation. In this paper, we shall examine some insights about these teacher practices, activities, and behaviors that create a better student-teacher relationship which eventually could help in avoiding school alienation.

Keywords:

School alienation, student-teacher relation, pedagogical practice.