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“So We Can Do Our Best.”

Research

“So We Can Do Our Best.”

“So We Can Do Our Best.”: Care in Children’s Relationships with Teachers

This volume offers a fresh approach to student-teacher relationships in middle childhood from the perspective of children in primary schools. It explores how children express their learning and emotional needs, as well as their  experience of good and less good student-teacher relationships. Their apprehension of care and its reciprocity, of the need for time and proximity in teaching and learning, of the vicariousness of the experience, and crucially, of the place of learning in student-teacher relationships, is authentically evoked through rich verbatim quotations. Children’s accounts answer questions which teachers, parents, professionals and  policy-makers ask. In the experience of children, what makes a person a teacher?  What is a “good” student-teacher  relationship?  Can children with poor relationship histories have good relationships with new teachers? How is learning or  “doing well” integral to “getting on well”?

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Malta University Press
Research
2025

Mary Darmanin

Professor Mary Darmanin, B. A. Hons, M. A. (Essex), Ph. D (UWCC), is full professor with the Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Malta. Her research includes: education policy making; gender in education, and in the labour market; the education of girls in Catholic schools; the symbolic, religious and material cultures of schools; multiculturalism and (in)toleration of religious diversity in a Catholic state; and children as vicarious bearers of the faiths. Her latest publication (2024) is a compelling account of children’s experience of one of the most important relationships in their lives. “Getting on well” with teachers condenses their keen desire to do well academically, with the hope of securing respect and care in this vital relationship. Children’s verbatim accounts are presented in the original Maltese as well as in translation, making the volume a unique record of how 9-11 year olds express themselves in the vernacular.

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