METRIC PROPERTIES OF THE SCALE FOR STUDENT ASSESSMENT OF TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS

Abstract

The teacher-student relationship represents one of the key pedagogical factors influencing the quality of the educational process, student motivation, engagement, and psycho-social development. Based on attachment theory, self-determination theory, and the concept of school climate, this research aims to examine the factor structure and metric characteristics of the scale for student assessment of teacherstudent relationships. The sample included 195 subject-teaching students from primary schools in the city of Banja Luka. A five-point Likert scale of 25 items was constructed, initially based on five theoretically defined dimensions of the relationship. By applying Principal Axis Factoring with Oblimin rotation (KMO=0.902) and a Bartlett’s test of sphericity: χ²=1019.375; p<0.001), a two-factor structure was extracted, explaining 50.39% of the total variance. The first factor, designated as socio-emotional teacher support, explains 43.46% of the variance and includes items related to trust, acceptance, support, fostering autonomy, and the development of student self-confidence, showing high internal consistency (α=0,90). The second factor, designated as the pedagogical-regulative component of the teaching relationship, explains 6.93% of the variance and refers to student perceptions of fairness, teacher mood, and the clarity of instructional directions. The reliability of this subscale is moderate (α=0,67), which is acceptable given the small number of items, but indicates a need for further refinement of this dimension. The scale as a whole shows a high degree of internal consistency (α=0,89). The results indicate that students perceive the relationship with teachers as an integrated yet structurally differentiated construct dominated by the socio-emotional component, while the regulative-pedagogical aspect represents a separate, less pronounced, but theoretically significant segment of the relationship. These findings provide a basis for further metric validation and application of the instrument in various educational contexts.