Author: Ve Romey, Doctoral Researcher in EDUCA-Doc Doctoral Education Pilot, University of Jyväskylä

In this blog post, I will outline the importance of including relationship building in initial teacher education, drawing both on my own doctoral research and other European studies.

For years, migration and education have been in the news and in the mouths of European politicians – be it on campaign trails, in evening debates, or in dashing headlines, over and over questioning how to deal with ‘those people’, and often followed by nationalistic or populistic argumentation. It is true that rising migration rates have led to new challenges in many countries, polarising established communities (Gross, 2023). In education, we try to investigate what support culturally diverse students need, and why there are so often disparities between academic outcomes and social well-being compared to students belonging to cultural majorities (e.g., Romey et al., 2025).

In the meantime, societies segregate along cultural and ethnic lines, dividing between us and them, between we and other. We lose the perspective of us. It is our children, not those children, that are not receiving adequate education, and it is our people, not those others, that struggle to overcome systemic and structural injustices. For me, it feels like we have long lost the sense of community, of embracing the beauty of diversity within an understanding of us. And at the core of each community are relationships, which is the topic I have been investigating within my doctoral research – specifically, relationship building as a learnable skill for student teachers.

Positive and reciprocated relationships tie a community together, foster feelings of belonging, and help to overcome differences and challenges as one (e.g., Orazani et al., 2023). However, while the benefits of positive relationships on academic outcomes as well as student and teacher well-being and the overall social cohesion have been found in many different culturally diverse educational contexts throughout Europe, the ‘how’ often remains unanswered (e.g., Romey et al., 2025). 

The skill to build relationships is often seen as some inherent trait that some student teachers just possess or have developed through their own experiences and interests. In other cases, people highlight that student teachers will develop these skillsets when actively working in culturally diverse contexts. Of course, many teachers develop their skillsets on the job, so to speak. No student teacher can be prepared for every possible situation in their working life. Nonetheless, in many European teacher education programmes, relationship building remains an elusive topic (Borresmans et al., 2024). Often only addressed marginally within broader contexts of diversity or classroom management, relationship building skills remain overlooked and underdeveloped. This leaves beginning teachers in many contexts feeling un(der)prepared for culturally diverse classrooms, affecting both their self-efficacy and their ability to provide adequate teaching for their diverse students (e.g., Dražnik et al., 2022).

So, what are relationship building skills? And could they actively be developed within initial teacher education? Research suggests that relationship building connects to communication skills, cultural beliefs, and self-efficacy, making it a learnable and developable skillset for student teachers (Robinson et al., 2022). I argue that while not every teacher needs to be a social butterfly that effortlessly navigates any interpersonal situation, they do need to be able to facilitate relationships between different stakeholders in school communities, such as students, their families, and other school staff, especially when these communities are culturally diverse.

In my research, I have investigated how relationship building has been addressed by European research and explored the development of cultural beliefs during early initial teacher education in a Finnish context. My findings suggest that relationship building is not necessarily a skillset that is even indirectly addressed within initial teacher education, and that especially those student teachers who already hold more assimilationist or nationalistic views might not change these throughout their first years of initial teacher education (Romey et al., under review-a). Furthermore, another study on the perspectives and approaches of Finnish teacher educators to prepare for cultural diversity highlighted that teacher educators themselves often feel underprepared to address these topics, relying on personal experiences and interest as opposed to professional learning (Romey et al., under review-b).

I invite you to consider your own relationships with your peers and colleagues, and how often it is close connections that enable us to share knowledge, understanding, and learning with each other. Relationship building skills are needed by teachers, and student teachers, and teacher educators. They are needed by society. I strongly believe that by including relationship building skills explicitly in initial teacher education curricula, we might not be able to solve all the challenges related to migration and cultural diversity present in today’s society – but it is a starting point, that all our children will benefit from.

If you would like to discuss my statements or my research further, I would love to hear from you at leandra.ve.romey@jyu.fi. I am also happy to provide a more extensive reference list, if wished.

References

Borremans, L. F. N., Koomen, H. M. Y., & Spilt, J. L. (2024). Fostering teacher–student relationship-building competence: a three-year learning trajectory for initial pre-primary and primary teacher education. Frontiers of Education, 9, 1349532. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1349532

Dražnik, T., Llompart-Esbert, J., & Bergroth, M. (2022). Student teachers’ expressions of ‘fear’ in handling linguistically diverse classrooms. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 45(8), 3127–3142. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2022.2086258 

Gross, S. G. (2023). Understanding Europe’s populist right: The state of the field. Contemporary European History, 32, 489-497. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777322000261

Orazani, S. N., Reynolds, K. J., & Osborne, H. (2023). What works and why in interventions to strengthen social cohesion: A systematic review. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 53(10), 938-995. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12990

Robinson, C. D. (2022). A framework for motivating teacher-student relationships. Educational Psychology Review, 34, 2061-2094. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09706-0 

Romey, L. V. S., Varis, S., Pakarinen, E., & Mankki, V. (2025). Relationship building in culturally diverse European classrooms – a scoping review. Multicultural Education Review, 17(3), 330–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.2025.2553999 

Romey, L. V. S., Lähteenmäki, M., Pakarinen, E., Varis, S., Wallinheimo, K., & Mankki, V. (under review-a). Cultural Belief Profiles of Finnish Student Teachers.

Romey, L. V. S., Varis, S., Pakarinen, E., & Mankki, V. (under review-b). Teacher educators’ perceptions of and approaches to cultural diversity in teacher education.