Navigating the Ethical Landscape: Teacher-Student Relationships and Stress in Higher Education

Introduction

This article explores the complexities of the teacher-student relationship at the university level, focusing on the ethical considerations and stress factors that impact both teachers and students. The quality of these relationships is critical, influencing academic performance, productivity, and overall well-being. This study aims to highlight the sources of tension and stress experienced by both students and teachers and how these factors affect their interactions, ultimately impacting social and economic activities.

The Evolving Dynamics of Student-Teacher Relationships

As students progress in their academic careers, particularly at the university level, their interactions with teachers evolve. The relationship shifts from a traditional classroom dynamic to one involving more personalized guidance, especially during projects and research. This transition demands a significant investment of the teacher's time and support, making the quality of the student-teacher relationship even more critical.

A healthy and productive teacher-student interaction is linked with the progress and satisfaction of both student and the teacher. Both have different expectations from each other. A student wants his teacher to be fair, caring, and available when needed, productive, lenient, and understanding. Likewise, teachers expect their students to be productive, fully prepared, obedient, and do their assigned work on time.

Stress: A Pervasive Influence

Stress is a significant issue affecting individuals across all facets of life, and academia is no exception. Often, individuals hesitate to discuss stress, leading to potentially dire consequences. The effects of stress can be disastrous and unpredictable; therefore, it needs to be carefully handled. Stress usually occurs when the demands of a person exceed from his abilities. Stress is known as a “state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances”. Common causes behind the stress are usually financial, emotional, environmental, social, economic, and academic. Stress creating features are called stressors. Different studies found various effects of stress in terms of diseases, loss of appetite, sleeping issues, changes in mood, learning disabilities, attentiveness issues, and many more.

Methodology

This study employed a quantitative approach, utilizing inferential statistics to analyze the relationship between stress and academic activities. The sample consisted of 160 participants: 80 students and 80 teachers from the University of the Punjab, Pakistan. Purposive sampling was used to select participants based on their relevance to the research objectives. Data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire divided into three sections: demographics, closed-ended questions assessing the association between stress and performance, and Likert scale questions exploring various stress-related factors.

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Stressors Affecting Students

Coming towards academic stress at the student level, analysts have recognized distinctive vital stressors which incorporate difficult assignments, undesirable competition, fear of disappointment to full fill self-expectations, disturbed interpersonal connections in the course or with teachers, and family issues. Huss Factors such as programs comprised of complex concepts, undesirable lesson timings, highlighting week students by teachers, teachers’ rigid behaviours, teachers’ favouritism, and disturbed relationship with teachers, tough syllabus, cause burden on students.

Undergraduate students face diverse stressors, including tight deadlines for assignments. Furthermore, working students experience more stress during their final year due to project submissions. Short examination periods also contribute to student stress. When there is not sufficient time to complete the task of excessive workload accompanied by lack of support, and high expectations result in panic and anxiety. Many students find it difficult to manage their assignment in class, which increases stress. Particularly, the individuals who are not good at their studies, experience more stress in managing their work. Intensive workload and academic pressure act as main stressors at university level. Taking exams, studying for competition, and covering information in a small period create a high level of stress. Learning, achieving, and insufficient time to accomplish a task are all among the main academic stressors. Analysts give more importance to marks gained in papers as a symbol of a smart job and better opportunities. Due to the high level of pressure, their health and academic performance can be negatively affected.

In many cases, students work to make arrangements for fee. In case of females, some of them get married during their academic life and also have to manage their families. Sometimes, they have to give up their education to perform household activities. Females are given less opportunities for studying as compared to their male counterparts and those who get permission, face double difficulty; manage their home stress and it academic stress which creates difficulty for them to concentrate fully on their academic work (research project).

Stressors Affecting Teachers

On the other hand, teachers have to do multitasking, i.e., facilitate a large number of students working on different research topics, delivering lectures, dealing with the management and family issues. These are the stress-causing situations which cause a friction between teacher-student relationships which further affects the quality of work.

The Impact of Stress on Performance and Productivity

Based on the analysis, it was concluded that stress has a significant positive effect on both student-teacher performance which further affects the productivity and hence the economic activities get affected. The findings suggest that stress is strongly but negative associated with academic achievements. Due to low productivity, both students and teachers are unable to give their 100% which causes further stress and negatively affect social, economic and ethical activities. When the quality of work is affected, negative effects are observed both at the social and economic level.

Workplace stress is a very common problem in developing countries where the employer does not take into account the consequences of stress on their job performance and as a result, their productivity reduces at their workplace which may result in low income, loss of a job, unhealthy competition, etc. Excessive stress affects the individual negatively. Negative effects on individuals include reduced effectiveness, less inspiration, and non-appearance in an organization. The impact of stress can be seen as absenteeism and loss of employment which is a very serious case when employment level reduces in any economy, the economic growth reduces. As mentioned earlier, low economic growth does not only affect the individual growth of a country but also its performance gets negatively affected at the international level. In an organization, employee performance and goal achievement get negatively affected by stress. Occupational stress negatively impacts organizational performance as well as the cognitive patterns of employees working at different levels. Network members start feeling frustrated as a result of continuous stress. Job stress does not only reduce the performance level but also horribly affects healthcare. Accommodation, social, personal and academic factors influence the working ability of the individual.

Furthermore, low trade and investment patterns can cause low economic growth. Having a good mental and physical health is very important to perform different tasks at all levels for all starting from a simple daily wage earner to a politician running a country. According to a study, 74 countries (both industrial and developing) have been analysed over the period of 1980-2000, the results show that the countries in which population is healthy, has more productive workers and they witness high level foreign direct investment inflows.

Statistical Analysis and Key Findings

The study utilized SPSS 20.0 to analyze the data and generate findings represented through tables and discussions. Cronbach Alpha coefficients were calculated to check the reliability of the scales. Mean values were calculated to analyze which factor is affecting more both students and teachers and how much they are high or low with other scales. Each scale shows a high mean value that is more than 3.0.

The p. value that clearly represents that only two scales (1) Stress-related to students’ academic self-perception (students view); (2) Stress-related to academic expectations (teachers view) are not as statistically significant as their p. value is greater than 0.05 while the other six scales 1- Stress related to academic expectations, 2- Stress related to workload and examination, 3-Stress related to student and supervisor relationship (from the student point of view) and 1- Stress related to faculty work and examination, 2- Stress related to teachers academic self-perception, 3- Stress related to student and teacher relationship (teachers point of view) are highly significant as their value is less than 0.05.

Multiple regression test demonstrate that only four scales out of eight scales contributed significantly for predicting the stress and performance of the sample (Student and Teacher). The contribution of all scales is significant at p<0.05. The strongest predictors of the stress and performance are “Stress Related to Student and Supervisor Relationship (Student)”, “Stress Related to Faculty Work and Examinations (Teacher)” and “Stress Related to Student and Supervisor Relationship (Teacher)” and “Stress Related to Academic Work and Examinations (Student)”. Stress related to student and supervisor relationship (Student) is showing 29.7% of the variance and is the most significant variable in this study. Stress related to faculty work and examinations (Teacher) is the second most significant variable as its percentage of variance is almost 19.8%. Stress related to student and supervisor relationships (Teacher) is the third most significant variable that affects the performance of teachers with a variance of 16.4%.

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Ethical Considerations

The study also touched upon ethical considerations within the student-supervisor relationship. Students responded that the lack of support and unfair assessment from their supervisors also deemed a bit unethical proved to be the most stressful for them.

Implications and Recommendations

The findings of the study will help to highlight and eliminate the stressors that lower the performance of student and teachers which would ultimately help to flourish the social and economic factors. Abrar et al. (2020) suggest that there should a proper policy framework to smooth teacher-student relationship.

tags: #teacher #student #relationship #ethical #considerations