Chinese Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding of Teacher-Student Relationships in Canada and China

Teacher-student relationships are highly influential and preparing pre-service teachers with knowledge and competence about teacher-student relationships matters in teacher education. This study explores how Chinese pre-service teachers with cross-cultural learning experiences in Canada understood and compared teacher-student relationships in China and Canada, negotiated their understanding of teacher-student relationships, and how these reflective and comparative experiences shaped their own relational practices. This study adopts a qualitative approach to data collection in the form of interviews, reflective diaries, autobiographical writings, and other relevant written materials. We find the pre-service teacher compared teacher-student relationships in three aspects, including teacher perceptions, patterns of teacher-student relationships, and teachers’ behaviors in their interpersonal interactions with students in and outside the classroom in China and Canada, and they summarized the similarities and differences in these two countries. Meantime, they reported that the differences in cultures and educational conditions in China and Canada resulted in the differences in teacher-student relationships. We then discuss how the Reciprocal Learning Program facilitated the development of cross-cultural teacher education and professional development programs and its implications on teacher-student relationships among new teachers.