Studying the Changes of Teacher-Student Relationships in Taiwan’s Higher Education Due to Globalization and Changes in Social Culture

Establishing good teacher-student relationships is one important part of teaching professionalism. Sometimes teachers encourage students to learn effectively through establishing good relationships with students. In the traditional Chinese society, profession of teaching was firmly respected, and teachers were always honored and respected because of their identity. However, this traditional culture and attitude of respecting teachers has changed, especially in the field of higher education. According to our prior study on professors’ perceptions of the changing academic environment in Taiwan, up to 65% of the participants felt the quality and learning attitude of college students became worse, and quite a few teachers felt students did not respect their teachers as the students used to. The changes between teacher-student relationships may result from the following factors: (1) the changes of social culture; (2) the progress of technology and the internet, which expand the education channels and alter the ways of learning; and (3) globalization, which emphasizes the accountability in higher education and encourages the universities to use evaluation systems to force teachers to improve their teaching quality. To face these challenges mentioned above, teachers in higher education start to please their students by lowering requirements to increase the scores in their teaching evaluation. The purpose of the study is to explore the changes of teacher-student relationships in higher education in the background of globalization and changes in social culture. We will define the differences of teacher-student relationships between higher education and other education stages, and explore and analyze the changes of teacher-student relationships in Taiwan’s higher education in recent decades in the background of globalization. Finally, we will offer some suggestions based on our results.