THE RELATIONS BETWEEN A YOUNG BEGINNING UNIVERSITY TEACHER AND THEIR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Abstract

This paper focuses the relationship established in class by a young university teacher, in the beginning of her career, and her undergraduate students. Considering that the classroom is the privileged place for the teacher-student relationship to get established, we have sought, based in it and in the subjects who constitute it, to perceive and analyze the forms and ways of such relations, involving specifically a beginning teacher, close in age to her students, having been a student herself up to very recently, and her students. Data have been collected through classes observations, through a questionnaire applied to one of the teacher’s classes and through an interview with the teacher. The theoretical framework that allowed to discuss the data was based in Libâneo (1993), Morales (2011), Feixas (2002), Mayor Ruiz (2009), Bozu (2009) and Marcelo Garcia (2009). Among the findings, we may point out that: being young is a challenge for that teacher’s practice; the closeness in ages between the teacher and her students affects their relationship; the young teacher relies many times on her own experiences as a student, which can make her relationship with her students become more close and more friendly.