Using survey data from 457 Italian sixth grade secondary school students
(
M
age = 11.9, SD = 0.7, 46% girls) and 58 of their
teachers (
M
age = 45.7, SD = 9.4, 92.8% female) this study
examined the extent to which secondary school teachers were attuned to their
students. More specifically, we investigated the extent to which teachers were
aware of which students were highly liked, disliked, prosocial, aggressive, or
engaged in risky behavior. For each of these five dimensions, teacher attunement
was measured by comparing teacher’s nominations to the proportion of received
peer nominations per student. Then, a general teacher attunement score was
constructed by calculating the mean of these five scores. Descriptive analyses
showed a moderate teacher attunement, which was highest for prosocial behavior
and lowest for risk behavior. It was investigated whether certain teachers had a
higher attunement than others. Our analyses showed that teacher attunement was
positively associated with the amount of time teachers spent with their students
and with their experience as a teacher. Furthermore, attunement was negatively
associated with classroom size.