Peer Cooperation between Students and Teacher Support in Different School Subjects Classes

Cooperation between students realises quality peer relationships while teacher support encompasses the relations between students and adults. Abundant research stresses the importance of both relationships. Not all students possess the skills that enable them to cooperate with others, so teachers have the role of helping them develop and perfect these skills. Teacher support significantly influences not only students' academic achievements but also their emotional, social and moral development. The research goal was to describe how students perceive their mutual cooperation and the support from teachers in different school subjects. The research included 650 students from the seventh and eighth forms of 11 primary schools from Sisak-Moslavina County in the Republic of Croatia. Average age of the participants is 13.4 years, and their subject teachers' 69 years. The applied questionnaire consisted of two scales. Cooperation and Teacher Support. The mentioned scales were taken from the modified questionnaire What Is Happening in This Class (Fraser et al., 1996). Both scales were implemented in three school subjects: Croatian, maths and geography. The obtained results point to the fact that teachers are more directed to ensuring cooperation between students during lessons than to giving support in the work. Furthermore, teachers during whose class students realise better cooperation at the same time give higher level of support. Students assess that they cooperate the most in geography class, whereas at the same time they receive the least teacher support in this class. The correlation between education degree and years in service was not found when considering the results of the Cooperation and Teacher Support scales.