Class teacher's engagement in parent-teacher partnership and student's motivation in secondary schools

Parent-teacher partnerships are important prerequisites for successful school-related learning processes of students and is positive related to the relationship between teachers and students. This two-wave longitudinal study examines the relationship between parental work of class teachers, measured by their formal and informal communication practices, the teacher-student relationship, and the students' intrinsic motivation. The analyses are based on questionnaire data from N = 881 students of 39 classrooms (9th and loth grade) at German secondary schools (two school types: Gymnasium and Integrated Secondary School). Manifest-latent multilevel analyses show a significant and positive relationship between formal communication practices and students' intrinsic motivation at the class level. At the individual level, student-reported teacher-student relationship is significantly and positively related to students' intrinsic motivation.