The Relationship Between Student Well-Being and Teacher–Student and Student–Student Relationships: A Longitudinal Approach Among Secondary School Students in Switzerland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author(s),

It was very interesting to read into a manuscript delving into the significance of nurturing students' well-being and how to achieve it through the collaboration of teachers, students, and peers. The manuscript was skillfully crafted with a plethora of interconnected references. However, the introduction section appears excessively lengthy. It would be more beneficial to conduct a simple systematic literature or bibliometric review, which could be visualized using tools like VOSviewer to illustrate the connections. Additionally, improving the presentation table by minimizing the font size would greatly enhance readability.

The study's findings along with the conclusion and recommendation can be effectively summarized into a matrix, serving as the conclusion and final remarks. This matrix encapsulates the key insights and outcomes derived from the research. By structuring the conclusions in a matrix format, the data is presented in a clear and organized manner, facilitating easy interpretation and understanding.

For instance, the matrix could categorize the findings based on different variables or themes explored in the study. This categorization allows for a comprehensive overview of the results, highlighting the relationships and patterns identified. Additionally, the matrix can include specific data points or metrics to support the conclusions drawn.

Thank you and all the best.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to express our gratitude for your invaluable time and effort, and we are deeply appreciative of your thorough review of our manuscript. Your innovative comments have not only enriched the content but also enhanced the clarity and readability of the manuscript, making it a valuable contribution to the field.

All changes made to the manuscript are highlighted in red.

 

Comment 1: It was very interesting to read into a manuscript delving into the significance of nurturing students' well-being and how to achieve it through the collaboration of teachers, students, and peers. The manuscript was skillfully crafted with a plethora of interconnected references. However, the introduction section appears excessively lengthy. It would be more beneficial to conduct a simple systematic literature or bibliometric review, which could be visualized using tools like VOSviewer to illustrate the connections. 

Response 1: Thank you for the commentary and for introducing us to the VOSviewer, with which we were previously unfamiliar. We imported the journal articles utilized in the introduction and the theoretical background to create two figures for the supplementary material. These figures should provide the reader with an overview of the main articles as well as the main topics used in our manuscript. Specifically, “Figure S1: literature authors” is derived from bibliographic data and aims to display the authors of the main articles that were cited, the year of publication, and the connections between them. “Figure S2: literature main terms” displays the main terms that were used in the titles and abstracts of the cited articles (please see the attachment). By providing these supplementary files, we hope to offer a more simplified yet systematic overview of the literature we used. The following sentences were included in the article (page 2, lines 51–60): The coexistence of both types and the interrelated and dynamic nature of relationships in the classroom is suggested by numerous empirical and theoretical frameworks (e.g., Bowlby, 1969; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Hughes et al., 2001; Hughes & Chen, 2011). However, research on teacher–student relationships and student–student relationships has largely been conducted in separate lines, applying a multitude of different terms. In Figure S1 we provided a comprehensive overview of the articles included in the fields of student well-being and social relationships, while Figure S2 illustrates a detailed analysis of the predominant terminology utilized the fields of student well-being and social relationships (see Supplementary Material).

Comment 2: Additionally, improving the presentation table by minimizing the font size would greatly enhance readability.

Response 2: We have made the following adjustments to the tables:

• We have adjusted the font size in Table 1 to enhance readability.
• For Tables 2 and 3, we have reduced the font size and improved the layout to further optimize clarity.

Additionally, we have minimized the font size in Tables 4, 5, 6, and 7 to ensure consistency and readability across all tables.

Comment 3: The study's findings along with the conclusion and recommendation can be effectively summarized into a matrix, serving as the conclusion and final remarks. This matrix encapsulates the key insights and outcomes derived from the research. By structuring the conclusions in a matrix format, the data is presented in a clear and organized manner, facilitating easy interpretation and understanding. For instance, the matrix could categorize the findings based on different variables or themes explored in the study. This categorization allows for a comprehensive overview of the results, highlighting the relationships and patterns identified. Additionally, the matrix can include specific data points or metrics to support the conclusions drawn.

Response 3: In response to your comment, we have summarized the main conclusions of our study in a new Table 8, which we have named “Main study conclusions” (page 19, line 773). This table offers a summary of the most important findings of our study, from which the implementations are drawn. Moreover, we have numbered the main findings in the table and used the respective numbers in the text, so that the results can easily be linked to the according implementations. This allows us to integrate the main conclusions with the implementations while maintaining the ability to elaborate on them. Example (page 19, line 777): (1.) Fostering a positive academic self-concept could serve as a buffer for conflict in TSR,…

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Brief summary:

The manuscript explores a relevant subject regarding students' well-being and tries to comprehend, at the micro level of the school organization, dimensions regarding the school actors' relationships. The study values a cross-analysis or a joint analysis regarding a teacher-student and student-student relationship, which is identified as a research gap and a novelty. The theoretical framework that sustains the study and the methodological design is solid, and the longitudinal approach enriches it. The research questions and the hypothesis considered are coherent and aligned with the empirical design, strengthening the study’s validity and providing a clear foundation for the findings.

Writing:

The manuscript is written in good English, and the message is easily understood.

General concept comments:

The manuscript asserts a relevant research matter on educational sciences, providing relevant insights to policymakers, researchers, school principals, and especially teachers.

The abstract expresses the present-day context that demands this kind of study satisfactorily and clarifies the knowledge gap and the study's purpose. Considerations regarding the methodology, main results, and conclusions are also asserted. Concerning the results, the references to “t1” and “t2” are aspects that cannot be understood just by reading the abstract (lines 14 and 15); consider eliminating them or clarifying their meaning. In the abstract, again, just by reading it, it is not clear what the focus is around “teacher conflict”; is it about teachers' interrelations, student-teacher interplay, teacher/administrators relationships, professional conflicts, cultural conflicts, resources or curricular conflicts, etc.? Clarifying the concept (like it is done on page 3, line 142) can better inform the readers of the article's object. In general, the abstract mobilizes attention and interest.

The introduction highlights the importance of studying students' well-being, a key driver for improving teaching and learning. It debates the problem of positive and negative features that influence students’ well-being, making it transparent the gap in the literature that the study tries to address. The purpose, novelty, and importance of the study in the field of education science are also well addressed.  

The theoretical framework is coherent and clearly defines the dimensions and focus of the study. The social science theories that frame the study are also considered in the narrative. It discusses the concepts and factors arising from empiricism and theory that influence well-being in educational contexts and finishes by presenting the context.  The research questions and hypotheses are derived from a logical approach to theory. It includes references corresponding to recent publications (within the last 5 years) relevant to the articles’ object.

The methodological design is clear, well-described, and adequate for the study’s purpose. The statistics mobilized for the quantitative study are relevant and solid. In line, the results are presented with clarity and rigor. The student Well-being questionnaire includes some questions made in the negative form. How did you manage those reverse items? Could those items produce some limitations?

All the conclusions assembled in this study are strictly based on students' responses regarding 17 schools in three Switzerland cantons. The discussion (on page 16) gives the idea of generalizing the findings to Switzerland. Is the sample representative of the whole country, for the three cantons, or only of the 17 school's context? Please clarify this matter. Anyway, the study can always provide a possible harbinger for the whole of Switzerland.  

Regarding the discussion, the hypotheses are well-analyzed and justified statistically and in terms of theory. However, on pages 18 (line 631) and 19 (line 668), it is said that “as conflict with is considered a source of stress” and “they have a conflictual relationship with their teachers”, but can this be affirmed? The mean value of the variable conflict (table 1) expresses that students do not find conflict with teachers problematic (low value). The same happens with “physical complaints in school” and “social problems in school”.  How do you articulate this perspective considering the results of the statistical hypotheses testing? It is important to provide a characterization of the student's perception of well-being, positive and negative dimensions, translated by the variable's mean (and standard deviation) values in order to better clarify the understanding regarding the latent variables and the implications on well-being. Regarding this idea, analyze also the observations on page 18, lines 645-647 and 651. Does the risk of “diminished school and classroom climate” (really) exist in the schools studied?

Conclusions project (very well) the study's insights for enhancing student well-being in schools by emphasizing the significance of teacher-student and student-student relationships by fostering a positive classroom environment. However, the only specific conclusion of the study is presented in lines 751 to 753 (page 20). Please highlight the remaining key conclusions of the study.

Specific comments:

On page 6, lines 247 and 248 – In the hypothesis, clarify to whom “closeness and cohesion” is due. I understand that the concepts refer to closeness with teachers and cohesion with peers. The hypothesis should stand as itself.

On page 6, lines 250, 251, and 252, refer to positive and negative dimensions of well-being. Can you be more specific? it is too vague.

On pages 9 and 10, table 1 presents duplicated information regarding inter-item correlations. The results for half on the diagonal are repeated for the other half. Eliminate/avoid repetitions. Explain the statistical meaning of those results in the text (shortly). The mean values of the variables can also be used to characterize the tendency of the perceptions or feelings of the students regarding well-being (positive or negative).

On page 17, line 597: “… either the positive (hypothesis 1.3) or negative dimensions (hypothesis 1.4)”; Please add “…of the StudWB.”

On page 17, lines 581-584, What does it suggest? Please deepen the analyses and consequences because it seems to be a good presage for Switzerland's educational system! It is worth it to highlight the idea.

Author Response

Comment 1: The manuscript explores a relevant subject regarding students' well-being and tries to comprehend, at the micro level of the school organization, dimensions regarding the school actors' relationships. The study values a cross-analysis or a joint analysis regarding a teacher-student and student-student relationship, which is identified as a research gap and a novelty. The theoretical framework that sustains the study and the methodological design is solid, and the longitudinal approach enriches it. The research questions and the hypothesis considered are coherent and aligned with the empirical design, strengthening the study’s validity and providing a clear foundation for the findings.

Response 1: 

Dear Reviewer,

We appreciate your careful consideration and constructive feedback on our manuscript. Your recognition of the relevance of our study, its theoretical foundation, and its methodological approach, as well as its contribution to the field of research, is highly encouraging. We are grateful for your insights, which have helped us to further refine and strengthen our work. Thank you again for your time and valuable feedback.

All changes made to the manuscript are highlighted in red.

Comment 2: The manuscript is written in good English, and the message is easily understood.

Response 2: Thank you for your feedback.

Comment 3: The manuscript asserts a relevant research matter on educational sciences, providing relevant insights to policymakers, researchers, school principals, and especially teachers.

Response 3: Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Comment 4: The abstract expresses the present-day context that demands this kind of study satisfactorily and clarifies the knowledge gap and the study's purpose. Considerations regarding the methodology, main results, and conclusions are also asserted. Concerning the results, the references to “t1” and “t2” are aspects that cannot be understood just by reading the abstract (lines 14 and 15); consider eliminating them or clarifying their meaning. In the abstract, again, just by reading it, it is not clear what the focus is around “teacher conflict”; is it about teachers' interrelations, student-teacher interplay, teacher/administrators relationships, professional conflicts, cultural conflicts, resources or curricular conflicts, etc.? Clarifying the concept (like it is done on page 3, line 142) can better inform the readers of the article's object. In general, the abstract mobilizes attention and interest.

Response 4: We have provided further clarification to ensure the abstract can stand on its own. In detail, we have made the following adaptations:

• We have deleted t1 and t2 and replaced them with “measurement point 1” and “measurement point 2”.
• We have clarified the terms “teacher closeness” and “teacher conflict” and changed them to “teacher-student closeness” and “teacher-student conflict”.

Comment 5: The introduction highlights the importance of studying students' well-being, a key driver for improving teaching and learning. It debates the problem of positive and negative features that influence students’ well-being, making it transparent the gap in the literature that the study tries to address. The purpose, novelty, and importance of the study in the field of education science are also well addressed.  

Response 5: We appreciate your constructive feedback.

Comment 6: The theoretical framework is coherent and clearly defines the dimensions and focus of the study. The social science theories that frame the study are also considered in the narrative. It discusses the concepts and factors arising from empiricism and theory that influence well-being in educational contexts and finishes by presenting the context.  The research questions and hypotheses are derived from a logical approach to theory. It includes references corresponding to recent publications (within the last 5 years) relevant to the articles’ object.

Response 6: Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Comment 7: The methodological design is clear, well-described, and adequate for the study’s purpose. The statistics mobilized for the quantitative study are relevant and solid. In line, the results are presented with clarity and rigor. The student Well-being questionnaire includes some questions made in the negative form. How did you manage those reverse items? Could those items produce some limitations?

Response 7: We reverse-coded the negatively phrased items so that they aligned with the positively phrased ones, ensuring that all items measured the constructs consistently. This procedure was implemented to maintain the interpretability of the scale and to reduce potential biases related to response patterns. We added to following sentence to our manuscript (page 7, lines 325–327): Negatively worded items were reverse-coded to align with the positively phrased items, ensuring consistency in construct measurement and interpretability of the scale.

Comment 8: All the conclusions assembled in this study are strictly based on students' responses regarding 17 schools in three Switzerland cantons. The discussion (on page 16) gives the idea of generalizing the findings to Switzerland. Is the sample representative of the whole country, for the three cantons, or only of the 17 school's context? Please clarify this matter. Anyway, the study can always provide a possible harbinger for the whole of Switzerland.  

Response 8: In the context of Switzerland, the responsibility for the educational system lies with the individual cantons. However, since 2008, the cantons have made significant progress in the direction of hamonization. The “Intercantonal Agreement on Harmonization of Compulsory Education” (HarmoS Concordat), which was collectively formulated by the cantons, delineates the fundamental principles of this harmonization. The concordat encompasses provisions pertaining to school enrollement and the duration of the various levels of education, among other aspects. Notably, the Swiss educational system incorporates three regional language curricula: one each for German, French, and Italian, reflecting the country's linguistic diversity. While there may be some discrepancies in the curricula across the cantons, we do not anticipate that these variations will significantly impact our study's variables, including student well-being, teacher–student relationships, and student–student relationships. Additionally, the schools included in the study are located in both urban and rural areas. It is noteworthy that one of the cantons has designated both German and French as official languages. However, we attempted to refine the discussion by including the following sentence (page 14, lines 559–560): …among lower secondary school students in German-speaking Switzerland…

Comment 9: Regarding the discussion, the hypotheses are well-analyzed and justified statistically and in terms of theory. However, on pages 18 (line 631) and 19 (line 668), it is said that “as conflict with is considered a source of stress” and “they have a conflictual relationship with their teachers”, but can this be affirmed? The mean value of the variable conflict (table 1) expresses that students do not find conflict with teachers problematic (low value). The same happens with “physical complaints in school” and “social problems in school”.  How do you articulate this perspective considering the results of the statistical hypotheses testing? It is important to provide a characterization of the student's perception of well-being, positive and negative dimensions, translated by the variable's mean (and standard deviation) values in order to better clarify the understanding regarding the latent variables and the implications on well-being. Regarding this idea, analyze also the observations on page 18, lines 645-647 and 651. Does the risk of “diminished school and classroom climate” (really) exist in the schools studied?

Response 9: In reference to the comment regarding the mean values presented in Table 1, we concur that they are comparatively low in relation to the other dimensions of TSR, SSR, and StudWB. This observation is equally applicable to "physical complaints in school" and "social problems in school." Beyond the aforementioned low mean values, the results of our SEM analytic path analysis demonstrated that conflict in TSR, "physical complaints in school," and "social problems in school" exhibited a significant association over time, notwithstanding their low mean values. We thus endeavored to identify the rationale behind these observations within the discussion section. To enhance the clarity of our discussion, we incorporated a reference to the overall mean values (page 16, lines 649–650): Although the overall mean of conflict with teachers was relatively low, conflict with teachers may be considered a source of stress by students (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

Moreover, we concur that our findings do not permit the drawing of conclusions regarding the school or classroom climate. Consequently, we have removed this reference from page 17, lines 669–670.

Comment 10: Conclusions project (very well) the study's insights for enhancing student well-being in schools by emphasizing the significance of teacher-student and student-student relationships by fostering a positive classroom environment. However, the only specific conclusion of the study is presented in lines 751 to 753 (page 20). Please highlight the remaining key conclusions of the study.

Response 10: In response to your comment regarding the conclusions, we have summarized the main conclusions of our study in a new Table 8, which we have named “Main study conclusions” (page 19, line 773). This table offers a summary of the most important findings of our study, from which the implementations are drawn. Moreover, we have numbered the main findings in the table and used the respective numbers in the text, so that the results can easily be linked to the according implementations. This allows us to integrate the main conclusions with the implementations while maintaining the ability to elaborate on them. Example (page 19, line 777): (1.) Fostering a positive academic self-concept could serve as a buffer for conflict in TSR,…

Comment 11: On page 6, lines 247 and 248 – In the hypothesis, clarify to whom “closeness and cohesion” is due. I understand that the concepts refer to closeness with teachers and cohesion with peers. The hypothesis should stand as itself.

Response 11: We specified the conceptual references for closeness, conflict, and cohesion by labeling them as “closeness in TSR”, “conflict in TSR”, and “cohesion in SSR” to enhance clarity and consistency (page 6, lines 258–265).

Comment 12: On page 6, lines 250, 251, and 252, refer to positive and negative dimensions of well-being. Can you be more specific? it is too vague.

Response 12: We specified the positive and negative student well-being dimensions by explicitly naming them (page 6, line 256-257 and line 259-260):

• (i.e., positive attitudes toward school, enjoyment in school, positive academic self-concept)
• (i.e., worries in school, physical complaints in school, and social problems in school)

Comment 13: On pages 9 and 10, table 1 presents duplicated information regarding inter-item correlations. The results for half on the diagonal are repeated for the other half. Eliminate/avoid repetitions. Explain the statistical meaning of those results in the text (shortly). The mean values of the variables can also be used to characterize the tendency of the perceptions or feelings of the students regarding well-being (positive or negative).

Response 13: We acknowledge the redundancy present in the correlation matrix, and we have now made adjustments to the table. We have eliminated the duplicated values by displaying only the lower triangular part of the matrix. Additionally, we have included a brief explanation in the text. This explanation is meant to clarify the statistical meaning of the results. Furthermore, we have incorporated a short interpretation of the mean values. This interpretation aims to characterize students' general tendencies in their perceptions of well-being (page 9, lines 427–431): In order to avoid redundancy, only the lower triangular part of the matrix is displayed. The mean values provide insight into students' general perceptions, with higher values denoting higher values on the positive and negative StudWB dimensions, as well as higher values of closeness and conflict in TSR and cohesion in SSR.

Comment 14: On page 17, line 597: “… either the positive (hypothesis 1.3) or negative dimensions (hypothesis 1.4)”; Please add “…of the StudWB.”

Response 14: We added of StudWB (page 16, line 616).

Comment 15: On page 17, lines 581-584, What does it suggest? Please deepen the analyses and consequences because it seems to be a good presage for Switzerland's educational system! It is worth it to highlight the idea.

Response 15: We concur with the notion that further elaboration is worthwhile, and we have done so by referencing the dual education system that is implemented at the higher secondary school level in Switzerland (page 15, lines 591–596): This is particularly salient in the context of Switzerland, where a dual education system is implemented at the higher secondary school level, involving a division of time spent attending vocational schools and working on the job. In light of this, the potential for enhancing this dual approach to education, integrating theoretical knowledge and practical skill development already at the secondary school level, is a noteworthy consideration.