Looking at a new approach for teachers and students

Fizza Sabir, an international PhD candidate uses her background in psychology and education to look at teacher approachability. Teacher approachability is not a topic that immediately grabs your attention, but it is an essential part of what being a teacher is about. For Fizza Sabir, a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide, how comfortable undergraduate students feel about approaching their teachers with questions or for advice is part of a larger look at enhancing the relationship between teacher and student to deliver a better working and learning environment. The topic of teacher approachability and the connections between wellbeing and adult attachment style combine elements of two of Fizzas passions psychology and education. Taking the idea of adult attachment theory, she will interview undergraduate students and teachers back in Pakistan. She will then look at the personal characteristics teachers identify as essential to approachability and those determined by their attachment style and see if they match qualities students flag as the most important when looking at a teachers approachability. I havent seen any research where attachment theory, approachability, wellbeing have all been integrated. I think what Im doing is different, Fizza says. Adult attachment theory is a psychology theory, looking at the attachment styles adults develop through life. Most of the research Fizza has seen support that teachers of school children who fall into the secure attachment style are much more approachable, and make for better teachers. While the application of a psychology theory to education and teaching styles is not unheard of, the fact that Fizza focuses on these issues at an undergraduate level is what makes her work unique. Initially studying psychology as an undergrad, she also worked as a teacher in private schools in between continuing her studies, both in Australia and Pakistan. She returned to Australia in February 2012 to begin her PhD, after working as an Assistant Professor at the Fatima Jinnah Women University. When I could see some girls wanted to discuss some problems with other teachers, and they were unable to, they would instead come to me and say, tell us how we can solve this problem. W hen you are an educator you think about when you were a student. I can recall when I was a student, how difficult it was for me sometimes to approach certain teachers. They want to go for help, but they cant. Because of the barriers, because of the impressions they have. I think this is what brought me to this topic, Fizza says.

In Pakistan, where Fizza herself is from and where interviews for her research are conducted, training is provided in areas such as student assessment for academics who take lectures and tutorials, but not in how to interact with students and to build good working teacher-student relationships. Fizza hopes that her research will encourage universities in Pakistan to implement some form of training for academics to learn to best way to interact with students, as well as encourage more interactive styles of learning. This is the age where online education is getting very popular...but I have a very firm belief that human interaction is very important, it will always remain important.

This article looks at the research of PhD candidate Fizza Sabir and her thesis on teacher approachability and the interconnections between wellbeing and adult attachment styles at the School of Education at The University of Adelaide.