Attachment-Theory Based Pedagogy

There are a plethora of formal methods for educating undergraduate students, including recommendations for classroom management, concept presentation and assignment creation. What is often overlooked is the influence that student-instructor attachment might have on performance. On the primary and secondary levels there is evidence to support what we would assume to be true; that attachment does effect performance. We then assume that, to some degree, these findings would carry over to collegebased instruction. Instructors have their preferred teaching styles (based on their personality types and learning styles), but regardless of the variations that exist and how well they correspond to student preferences, what is essential to learning is student motivation. Motivation could be influenced by a combination of factors, including inherent interest, career objectives, external pressures (i.e., parental expectation), and appropriate (based on skill level) complexity of assignments. This paper proposes that student motivation, and, therefore, performance, are also (on the secondary level) affected by student-instructor attachments. First, we discuss the results of attachmenttheory research with K-12 students. Then we propose a (first) case where, on the secondary level, the studentteacher attachment should be explicitly (versus implicitly) developed/improved. Finally, we start to investigate methods that could eventually be formally evaluated for improving (healthy) student-teacher attachments, and, therefore, student performance, at the secondary level.