Beyond the classroom: investigating affect in teacher-student relationships in the Pedagogical Residency Program

Abstract

This paper focuses on how affect manifests itself between teachers and students in the English classes of the Pedagogical Residency Program (PRP), of the Additional Languages course at the Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA) in the city of Bagé. Students are increasingly demotivated in class, especially in English. Teachers need to reinvent themselves every day in order to provide a lesson that captivates the student's attention, creating strategies with new methods to improve student engagement. Fortunately, this reality is currently changing, with new researches about motivation in the classroom. Thus, this study seeks to understand which aspects are present in the Teacher-Student Relationship and how affect contributes to the learning process from the students' perspective. To this, a literature review was carried out, providing insights into the Pedagogical Residency Program (PRP), the meanings of affect, the teacher-student relationship and interpersonal relationships. The methodology used in this study was a qualitative case study. To obtain these results, interviews were carried out with open questions for the students and a survey questionnaire using the Google Forms website for the teachers and active residents in the two schools registered with the PRP, with the aim of capturing the experiences of each of them in the classroom. Through the analysis of the interviews, we saw that affect helps the learning process, as long as students trust their teachers and the classroom is a comfortable place for both students and teachers. The results achieved through this work are intended to help other teachers who have been trained or are in training to see beyond lesson planning to a respectful and affectionate classroom in which students feel motivated, useful and belong somewhere.