Professor–Student Rapport Scale: Six Items Predict Student Outcomes

Rapport between students and teachers leads to numerous positive student outcomes, including attitudes toward the teacher and course, student motivation, and perceived learning. The recent development of a Professor–Student Rapport scale offers assessment of this construct. However, a Cronbach’s a of.96 indicated item redundancy, and the 34-item scale is unwieldy in a survey-heavy culture. In addition, the most valuable outcome of student learning is actual grades, which remained to be assessed. In the current study, we relied on principal component analysis to reduce the number of items on the Professor– Student Rapport scale and examine predictive power of fewer items. We measured traditional student outcomes such as atti-tudes, motivation, and perceived learning. We also assessed end-of-semester grades to remove any potential student bias in learning or grade reporting. Six rapport items concerning student engagement and enjoyment of a course predicted all student outcomes, including course grades. Keywords professor–student rapport, scale development, principal component analysis Rapport between teachers and students relates to valuable student outcomes, such as student enjoyment of the material, class attendance, and time spent studying (Benson, Cohen, &amp