The association between pupils’ cognitive appraisal of their interpersonal relationships with their teachers and future relationships expectations

Employing cognitive attributional theories of interpersonal relationships, this investigation aimed to examine: (a) high school pupils’ attributions and attributional dimensions for their satisfactory or poor interpersonal relationships with their teachers and b) the association between pupils’ both attributional and intuitive appraisal of their interpersonal relationships with their teachers and pupils’ expectations of future relationships. The pupils (n=635) completed the scales of: intuitive appraisal for the interpersonal relationships with their teachers, attributional appraisal for their good or poor relationships with their teachers and expectations of the quality of future relationships with their teachers. Findings revealed that: (a) Pupils attributed the good relationships mainly to personal properties, while they attributed the poor relationships mainly to teachers- related factors, (b) Pupils, also, attributed the good relationships to internal, personal controllable, stable and external uncontrollable factors, whereas they ascribed the poor relationships to external, personal uncontrollable, stable and external controllable factors and (c) Causal attributions and intuitive appraisal influenced the expectations of the quality of future interpersonal relationship. Discussion focuses on: (a) the importance of the satisfactory interpersonal relationships within school, (b) the necessity of provision of psychological support to pupils and teachers for their well being, (c) the affective cognitive evaluation of the interpersonal relationships, (d) the necessity of enhancing teachers’ and pupils’ communicational skills and (e) future research.