Influence of Student-Teacher Relationship on the Academic Performance of Junior Secondary School Students in Mathematics in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria

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This study explored the influence of student-teacher relationship on the academic performance of Junior Secondary Schools students in mathematics in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. A descriptive survey design was used in this study. The sample for this study was 309 Junior Secondary School III students that were drawn from a population of 1364 using simple random sampling. Four research questions questions were formulated to guide the study. The instrument for data collection was the Student-Teacher Relationship Questionnaire (STRQ). The research questions were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The result of this study indicated that consistent communication between students and their teachers, teachers’ creating an emotionally open-learning space, teachers’ display of true equity and teachers’ display of mutual respect has a high influence on the academic performance of Junior Secondary School III students in Mathematics in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. Based on the findings, the study recommended that students across all levels of education should build positive student-teacher relationship with their teachers by engaging actively in classroom activities, showing respect to the mathematics teacher and also try as much as possible to communicate consistently with the mathematics teacher. The study also recommended that mathematics teachers should be encouraged to improve on their personal relationship with their students as this will enhance the academic performance of the students, and they should also bring their wealth of experience in teaching of mathematics to the level of students’ aptitude to make personal relationships of students with their teachers more interesting so as to arouse the interest of the students to academic excellence.