‘Relationships underpin everything’: What we can learn from the Nordic Teaching Model and a focus on relationships and student perception as a recently qualified teacher

Jim Rogers, Education Specialist, www.jimrogerstraining.com; Partner, The Nordic Schools, UK Julia Hill, Teacher of Art and Photography, The Castle School Taunton, UK Introduction In both the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) and the new Early Career Framework (DfE, 2021), building positive relationships of mutual trust and respect are defined as expectations of teachers. But to what extent do we explicitly focus on strategies to develop these relationships and why is this important? In Addressing Educational Disadvantage, Rowland (2021) dedicates a chapter to relationships and states that ‘relationships underpin everything’ (p. 45). He draws from Osher et al. (2018), whose research focuses on how relationships and context can shape learning, development and resilience, in both a positive and a negative way. As a recently qualified teacher (RQT – pre-early career teacher), this is always a challenge due to the lack of time with students to build these relationships, a situatio