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

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) (M-age = 10.02 years, SD = 1.25) and their 35 teachers (85.7% female; M-age = 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.