Research On The Relationship Between Supervisors And Postgraduates From The Perspective Of Liberal Master’s Degree Students

Masters of Arts, as the graduate student education group, have big differences withmasters of sciences and engineering in terms of training methods. In the natural science,learning and research are mainly conducted in laboratory. Teaching and research sectionand laboratory are platforms for teacher-student interaction. In Humanities, learning ismainly conducted by students themselves. Influenced by social demand, research projectsin liberal arts are far less than in science and engineering. Students and teachers have notthe platform for communication due to the lack of media such as experiment andlaboratory. At present, as single or mentor group collective guidance is the main trainingmodel in the master training in China and the mentor is the main person in charge ofmasters in the training process, the interaction between both sides in the training processexert important impact on the personal development of the master. However, differentcharacteristics are presented in the interaction process due to the influence of internal andexternal factors. Therefore, it is of practical significance to the student development toclear the communication between teachers and students at the status quo andteacher-student relationship.In this paper, masters of Arts in H University are selected as the object of study. Therelationship status quo, types and its different influences to student development betweenmasters of Arts and teachers are obtained from the questionnaire survey of the masters ofArts department. It can be concluded that main factors influenced the studentsdevelopment include communication content between teachers and students, studentsintention in communication, mentors management investment to students, mentorsrecognition to students and mentors guidance characteristics through correlation analysisand variance analysis. The main findings of the study are as follows:1) The differences among faculty and student affect the quality of communication. The communication initiative of males with mentor is higher than that of females. Malementors are inclined to carry out communication in the way of collective interview whilefemale mentors conducted mainly in personal interviews. Students are close to youngmentors. The chances of the extra-curricular activities and projects participated by bothteachers and students are less. The initiative of communication between teachers andstudents increases with grade increments, but the content of communication mainly liesin learning and thesis.2) The complexity of personal relationship determines the diversity of therelationship betweem faculty and students. There are mainly five types of the relationshipbetween teachers and masters of Arts in H University. They include active type, strongcontrol type, pure academic guidance type, limited laissez-faire type and type of cutting.Active teacher-student relationship promotes the development of the various aspects ofstudents while type of cutting relationship almost has no effect on students. Strongcontrol type, limited laissez-faire type and academic guidance promote the developmentof the certain aspects of students. There are both commonalities and differences amongvarious types.3) The charming personality and the humane care of the mentor are associatedsignificantly with the developments of students. When the mentor shows signals such asappreciation and trust to students in communications, students participate in learningactivities more active. The signal of the respect makes students more willing tocommunicate with the mentor.4) The content of communication between teachers and students, activeparticipation of students and team all affect the development of the student. When thecontent of communication between teachers and students is more rich, students activelyparticipate in the training process and there is a harmonious teacher-student relationship,the greater the influence by teacher. Based on the above findings, we propose the following measures:First, teacher-student interaction platform such as the introduction of a networkdialogue and enrich extra-curricular activities of teachers and students can be created.Second, both teachers and students should clear their own roles such as students shouldstrength the study of knowledge and mentors change the role concept. Third, the mentorcan be taken as “glue” and the role of the interaction between masters with the samementor can be given full play so as to promote their communications and form a goodlearning atmosphere. Finally, a reasonable teacher evaluation mechanism can beestablished.