Facets of Teachers'Close Friendships：The Macau sample
Wai Hing Cheuk(Faculty of Education University of Macau)
This paper reports two studies on facets of close friendships among teachers. In the first study, we reasoned, based on a model of self-evaluation mainte-nance, that teachers would avoid developing close friendships with peer teachers who teach the same subject, in order to avoid experiencing negative self-evalu-ation when the peer teachers exhibit excellent performance. In-service second-ary school teachers in Macau responded to a questionnaire assessing friend-ship experiences involving their peer teachers. No support was obtained for our hypothesis.
One objective of the second study was to examine the extent of social support that teachers obtained from a colleague they considered a close friend. A further objective was to examine if teachers who had developed close friend-ships with one of their colleagues experienced less spurning. Secondary school teachers attending an in-service programme at the University of Macau re-sponded to a questionnaire that contained measures of friendship with one of their colleagues, support obtained from their close-friend colleague, and spurn-ing. The results indicated that most teachers professed to have developed a close friendship with a colleague. Such teachers obtained moderate support from their close-friend colleague and experienced relatively less spurning.
Introduction
Much has been written about teacher perceptions and behaviour that might foster effective learning in students.1
Very little, however, is known about the social world of teachers, such as their choice of friends, their pattern of friendship development, and the conditions and ways of terminating the relationship. Little is therefore known about the effects of friendship on teachers' job performance and psychological well-being.
The scientific literature on friendship suggests that close friendships are charac-terised by an exchange of many types of resource, by mutual caring and by interde-pendence.2 Moreover, a well-established finding in the literature on self-disclosure is that having someone to whom one can disclose one's problems is health-promoting.3
Such exchanges of resources have been conceptualised as social support.4 Thereare indications that social support can buffer the negative effects of various stresses on a person's well-being.5
Thus, for teachers, interaction with close friends, through the mutual exchange of information, materials or encouragement, including the availability of targets for disclosing one's difficulties, should alleviate the negative effects of various stresses, such as those involving relations with students, students' parents, fellow teachers and supervisors. The availability of close friends should therefore be of positive value to the psychological health of teachers.
Two studies on teachers' close friendships are reported in this paper. The first study deals with the processes by which close friendships are developed among teachers. The second study addresses the proposed therapeutic (buffering) effects of close friendships on the extent of spurning experienced by teachers.
Study One
This study investigates the effects of social comparison processes in the friend-ship choice of teachers. Tesser and Campbell's (1983)6 model of self-evaluation maintenance stipulates that individuals attempt to maximise their self-evaluation. They gain in self-evaluation when a close other has performed well on a task that reflects a dimension not important to the self. The individuals can, in essence, bask in the glory of the close other. However, when a close other has performed well on a task that reflects a dimension important to their self-definition, their positive self-evaluation will be threatened.
Tesser and Campbell further postulated that a person whose self-evaluation had been threatened would attempt to maintain self-evaluation in various ways. For instance, the person could decrease his or her degree of closeness with the previously close other. In the case of friendship, this would mean that the person would come to perceive the previously close other as no longer a close friend.
It is plausible that a person could avoid in various ways having to encounter a situation in which the superior performance of a close other was likely to reflect negatively on his or her self-evaluation. For instance, people could avoid estab-lishing close relationship with those who, for some reason, engaged in tasks whose performance would have a significant bearing on that self-evaluation. In so do-ing, even if the other person had performed well on the task, the person's self-evaluation would be relatively less affected.
In the case of teachers, this means that they would tend to avoid becoming friends with a target person who needed to perform tasks relevant to the teachers' self-evaluation needs. To most secondary school teachers, such relevant tasks ap-pear to comprise the teaching of their major subject of specialisation. Thus, the more a teacher defines himself or herself as a competent teacher of a certain sub-ject, the more relevant the teaching performance of that subject would be to that teacher's self-evaluation. And when a close other is believed to have been teach-ing that subject matter as well as or even better than oneself, his or her self-evalu-ation would be negatively affected. One strategy for avoiding such a threateningsituation would be to avoid a close relationship with peers who taught the same subject. It was therefore predicted that teachers would be more likely to have close friends who teach a different subject than to have close friends who teach the same subject.
Method
Secondary-school teachers enrolled in an in-service teacher training pro-gramme offered by the University of Macau were invited to participate in a study purportedly investigating their perception of school lives. Forty-two teachers agreed to take part in the study. They were then requested to respond to a ques-tionnaire.
The questionnaire contained, in addition to filler items, items measuring (a) whether or not the respondent professed to have a close friend among his/her colleagues at work, and (b), if the respondent did have such a close friend, whether or not such a person was teaching the same subject as the respondent.
Results
A chi-square test conducted on the measure of whether the respondents had developed a close friendship with colleagues at work revealed that the majority (73%) reported having developed such a relationship, X2 (1) = 40.01, p < .0005. A chi-square test conducted on the measure assessing whether or not the respond-ents' friend was teaching the same subject as the respondent revealed that, con-trary to what was hypothesized, more respondents (N = 27) reported having friends who were teaching the same subjects than did respondents who had friends teach-ing a different subject (N = 15), X2 (1) = 4.878, p < .05.
Some conjectures can be offered as to why this was the case. In secondary schools, it is usually the school authority who decides which subjects the teachers will teach. Furthermore, if several teachers are assigned to the same subject, the teachers concerned are urged or even required to discuss with one another how the subject is to be taught. In essence, teachers who are assigned to teach the same subject are forced to be in frequent contact with one another.
Still, this externally imposed constraint does not explain why they become friends. A number of processes may be responsible for the development of attrac-tion between such individuals. The shared duty of having to perform similar tasks would lead such individuals to perceive themselves as being similar. It could also induce a sense of togetherness. Continued interaction would lead to increased exposure to what they had in common and promote mutual understanding, all of which could increase mutual attraction. In sum, similarity in duties and frequent interaction could be responsible for an increased mutual attraction. It is still plau-sible that observation of a close other performing well on the self-referent dimen-sion of professional competence was threatening, but this deterrent might be over-ridden by the effects of perceived similarity in other respects and by repeated in-teraction. Future studies could examine how all these processes operate to affect choice of friends among teachers.
No support was found for our prediction that teachers would be less likely to de-velop friendship with colleagues who were teaching the same subject. This is in no way a refutation of Tesser and Campbell's (1983) model, for in this study the extent to which the teaching of a certain subject constituted a dimension that the teachers considered to be relevant to their self-evaluation was not measured. Future studies should also attempt to establish which dimensions teachers perceive as self-referent.
Study Two
The first objective of this study was to document the extent to which close friendships had been developed among teachers, and the extent of social support obtained in such relationships.
Based on previous empirical studies of close friendships, we predicted that teachers would perceive the fellow teacher they considered as a close friend to be supportive of their teaching.
A second objective was to examine the extent to which teachers who had de-veloped close friendships with their fellow-teachers experienced the stressful syn-drome of spurning, relative to teachers who had not developed such close friend-ships. It has been theorised that rejection of help by a person needing it is experi-enced by the would-be helper as a stressful expectancy violation, stressful because of the rejection's unfavourable implications for the helper's self-image.7 Cheuk and Rosen reasoned that the work of teachers included offering instructions and advice to students not simply on not academic matters, but also on their personal development.8 Students, for many different reasons, may not accept teachers' help or advice, or may accept it but not then adhere to what has been suggested. The work of teachers is therefore permeated with the possibility of experiencing per-sistent rejection of help by students. They further proposed that spurning could contribute to burnout, on the assumption that in their model of spurned helpers' reactions, reactions to rejection and the variable that mediates the effects of rejec-tion on subsequent rejection were similar, respectively, to the suggested compo-nents and antecedent of burnout.9 The results provided support for the role of spurning on burnout: spurning was significantly related to burnout in the sample of teachers investigated.
In sum, spurning can be regarded as a potent stressor for teachers. To reflect the therapeutic effects of close friendships, we hypothesised that teachers who had developed a close friendship with a fellow-teacher would experience less spurning than teachers who had not developed such a relationship.
Method
Primary-school teachers enrolled in an in-service teacher training programme offered by the University of Macau were invited to participate in a study purport-edly investigating their perception of school lives. One hundred and thirty teach-ers agreed to take part in the study. They were then requested to respond to aquestionnaire.
The questionnaire contained, in addition to filler items, (a) an item indicating whether or not the respondent professed to have a close friend among his/her colleagues at work, (b) an item, on a scale ranging from (1) "extremely non-sup-portive" to (21) "extremely supportive", assessing the extent to which the respond-ent found their close-friend colleagues to be supportive of their teaching, and (c) a 12-item measure of perceived spurning. It was adapted from the 12-item measure employed by Mickler & Rosen (unpublished). Respondents rated the extent to which students resisted or did not avail themselves of the respondents' offers of help, on scales ranging from (1) "applies very little to me" to (11) "applies very much to me". Examples are: students feel more reluctant to approach me for help than to approach my fellow professionals; students turn down my advice because they question its value; I seem to have difficulty in persuading students that I have no ulterior motive in offering my services to them; when I advise students, they listen seriously (a reversed item). A composite measure was constructed through simple averaging of the items, after reverse keying four of them.
Results
Seventy out of the one hundred and thirty teachers indicated that they had a close friend among their fellow-teachers. The teachers who professed to have a close friend among their fellow-teachers perceived such friends to be moderately supportive (M = 14.68, SD = 3.23).
To assess the therapeutic effects of close friendships, a t-test was conducted. The results, as hypothesized, indicated that teachers who professed to have a close friend among their fellow-teachers experienced less spurning (M = 3.81) than did teachers who professed not to have such a friend (M = 5.32), t = 5.31, p < .03.
Most of the teachers surveyed professed to have developed a close friendship with one of their fellow-teachers. Furthermore, they found that close friend to be supportive of their teaching. Such results are in line with the findings of studies on close friendships.
Support was also obtained for the hypothesized positive effects of social sup-port on spurning: teachers who professed to have a close friend among their fel-low-teachers admitted less spurning than teachers who did not. Perhaps it is sup-port from their close-friend colleagues that enables teachers to deal with difficult students they encounter in their work. For instance, information from the close-friend colleague could help the spurned teachers realise that spurning by students or other colleagues is not infrequent, or that such rejection may indicate very little about one's teaching or interpersonal competence. Advice from the close friend may also assist teachers in dealing with the rejecting students, or to relate to stu-dents in ways which could avoid future rejection. Words of concern from the close friend would not only ease the distress, but also help restore a spurned teacher's confidence.
It was not thought valid to ask teachers without a close friendship with a fel-low-teacher about the extent of support obtained from a close-friend colleague. This design therefore does not allow a testing of the extent to which the effects of close friendships on burnout are mediated, in part, by the degree of support obtained froma close-friend colleague. Future studies might examine the degree of closeness of friendships that teachers have developed with their fellow-teachers, the extent of the type of support (i.e., whether informational, material or emotional) obtained from colleagues of different degrees of closeness, and the effects of support on burnout.
Granted that the effects of close friendships are therapeutic, it is worth inves-tigating the processes by which close friendship relationships among teachers are initiated and developed. Furthermore, the effects mutual provision of support (or a lack of such) would have on friendship development, as well as on job-related perceptions, also need to be examined.
Concluding Remarks
Further studies need to be carried out on the processes leading to the devel-opment of close friendships among teachers. Likewise, processes underlying the dissolution of such close friendships remain to be examined. The second study indicated that close friendships were associated negatively with spurning. How-ever, the specific cognitive, affective and behavioural correlates by which support is sought or given among such close friends need to be investigated. Cross-sec-tional methodology, such as that reported here, should be accompanied by more powerful experimental and longitudinal studies to uncover the processes involved in the various and varied facets of close friendships among teachers.
Notes
1 See, for example, R. M. Gagne and L. J. Briggs, Principles of Instructional De-sign (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1979) and also J. Louman, Master-ing the Techniques of Teaching (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984).
2 See, for example, M. Argyle and M. Henderson, "The Rules of Friendship," Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1, (1984), 211-237 and V. J. Derlega, M. Wilson, and A. L. Chaiken, "Friendship and Disclosure Reciprocity," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34 (1976), 578-582.
3 G. J. Chelune, L. B. Rosenfeld and E. M. Waring, "Spouse Disclosure Pattern in Distressed and Nondistressed Couples," American Journal of Family Therapy, 13 (1985), 24-32.
4 S. A. Shumaker and A. Brownell, "Toward a Theory of Social Support: Clos-ing Conceptual Gaps," Journal of Social Issues, 40 (1984), 11-36.
5 See, for example, S. Cohen and S. L. Syme, Social Support and Health (New York: Academic Press, 1985) and S. Cohen and T. A. Wills, "Stress, Social Support,and the Buffering Hypothesis," Psychological Bulletin, 98 (1985), 310-335.
6 A. Tesser and J. Campbell, "Self-Definition and Self-Evaluation Maintenance," in J. Suls and A. G. Greenwald (eds.), Psychological Perspectives of the Self, vol. 2 (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Elbaum, 1983)
7 S. Rosen, S. Mickler and J. E. Collins, "Reactions of Would-be Helpers Whose Offer of Help Is Spurned," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53 (1987), 288-297.
8 W. H. Cheuk and S. Rosen, "Validating a Spurning Scale for Teachers" (Un-published manuscript, University of Georgia, 1990).
9 C. Maslach and S. E. Jackson, "Burnout in Health Professionals: A Social Psychological Analysis," in G. S. Sanders and J. Sul (eds.), Social Psychology of Health and Illness, (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Elbaum, 1982), pp. 227-250.
