Teachers having similarities with their students may be more beneficial to the students than the teacher. 

A recent study conducted by Harvard University and Panorama Education found that positive relationships between teachers and their students can lead to better educational outcomes for students, said a blog post on PanoramaEd.com. 

"At the beginning of the school year, we gave 315 ninth grade students and 25 of their teachers a "get-to-know-you" survey during their first period classes," the post said. "In the survey, teachers and students responded to the same questions that asked about personal preferences such as favorite hobbies, charities they would support, and characteristics of a good friend, among others."

After separating the teachers and students into four groups, the study found that "teachers and students who learned what they had in common with the other party perceived themselves as being more similar," the post said. Another result was "when teachers learned that they shared commonalities with their students, they rated their relationships as more positive. [By contrast, the intervention did not significantly affect students’ perceptions of their relationship with their teachers]."

The last result the study found was that "when teachers received similarity reports about what they had in common with a randomly selected group of students, those randomly selected students earned higher grades in the class," said the post.

"Although it’s premature to make broad recommendations from a single study, we do think that this study underscores how important teacher-student relationship can be," the post said. "The study provides an important illustration of how similarities might be leveraged to improve these relationships in secondary schools."

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Article by Kassondra Granata, EducationWorld Contributor