Professional development for faculty members to build supportive and responsive relationships with students¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 1 study (1 quant-synthesis), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Among the implications the authors draw for educational practice is professional development that helps faculty cultivate supportive and responsive relationships with students. The article states: "We discuss implications for educational practice (such as professional development for faculty members) and future research (such as a more expansive set of outcomes or mediators)." The strategy targets the relational dimensions the review identifies, particularly care, given that measures including a dimension of care showed higher correlations with GPA.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Faculty development should address relational qualities (care, approachability, respect) rather than only increasing interaction frequency

Constraints¶

• The article presents this as a discussed implication rather than a tested intervention; no intervention effect sizes are reported

Target Learners¶

• postsecondary faculty and instructors

Target Learning Goals¶

• building supportive, caring faculty-student relationships to foster student achievement and persistence

Claims¶

• Perceived faculty-student relationships show a small but statistically significant positive correlation with postsecondary students' academic outcomes (r = .18) [+W]
• FSRs correlate more strongly with persistence (r = .33) than with achievement outcomes in postsecondary settings [+W]
• FSRs correlate positively but weakly with GPA (r = .17) and course grades (r = .16) [+W]
• Outcome type significantly moderates the FSR–outcome association, with persistence showing stronger correlations than achievement [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Fathi, Z., Zarei, P., Fong, C. J., Saha, A. K., & Sharmeen, S. (2026). The Caring Professor: A Meta-Analysis of Associations between Faculty-Student Relationships and Postsecondary Student Success. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10100-9