Boundary Issues in
Teacher-Student Relationships
S. Michael Plaut, Ph.D
S. Michael Plaut, Ph.D is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the
Assistant Dean for Student and Minority Affairs at the University of Maryland
School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. Dr. Plaut is also the Editor
of the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy (1996-2001) and is the Former Chair of
the Maryland Task Force to Study Health Professional-Client Sexual Exploitation.
This article has been reproduced with permission from The
Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 19, p. 210-219, 1993. Copyright © 1993
Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. All rights reserved.
Increasing concern about therapist-patient sex has led to a
consideration of boundaries in all trust-based relationships, which always include
elements of power and dependency. Such relationships include those between teacher and
student, especially those involving research or clinical supervision. Teacher-student
relationships differ from those between therapist and patient because of the collegiality
considered important for the student's development. Yet, both share the objective of
fostering independence of the "client." Therefore, teachers need to find a
balance of nurturance and separateness in their relationships with their students, so that
the students can carry that modeling into their own careers.
FOOTNOTE
I would like to thank Kathleen Donofrio, Peter Fagan, Stuart Keill,
Stephen Max, Catherine Nugent, Judith Plaut and Bernice Sigman for their critical review
of the manuscript. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Loyola College,
Baltimore, Maryland, in August 1992 and at the annual meeting of the Society for Sex
Therapy and Research, San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March 1993.
One of the most satisfying aspects of teaching at the
college or university level may be found in the mentoring relationship that faculty
members can develop with their students. A good mentoring relationship can be what is
sometimes called a "peak experience" for both mentor and student -- a sharing of
something unique that no one else may experience in quite the same way. The student
experiences an acceptance of ideas and contributions that may be unequalled in previous
life experience. It has been shown that "graduate student relations with members of
the faculty is regarded by most graduate students as the most important aspect of the
quality of their graduate experience."1
The mentor may experience, through the student, the closest one may
feel to a professional immortality -- a feeling that the baton is being passed to someone
worthy and that one's work will live on, not only on the yellowing pages of a journal
somewhere in the stacks of a library, but in the mind and work of someone younger, more
energetic, and equally committed to the task to which one's professional life has been so
fully devoted.
A unique aspect of the mentoring relationship among professional
relationships is that the student is, at the same time, both student and colleague. In a
healthy mentoring relationship, the student is encouraged and expected to be candid in
responding to the teacher's ideas, methods, or words. Part of a mentor's role is to
acquaint the student, not only with the specialized field that is shared, but also with
the other leaders in the field and with the ways of professional and academic life. That
apprenticeship process may include travel, social activities, and glimpses into each
other's personal lives. And yet, despite this closeness and sharing, the teacher does
remain a teacher and the student a student. The teacher maintains certain evaluative
responsibilities and the student continues to be dependent on the mentor's guidance and
approval.
Sometimes, however, the very closeness of the relationship challenges
that necessary distance. Feelings of admiration and respect may become intense and
personal. When those feelings do occur, what do we do with them? Can we experience them
comfortably and still maintain appropriate student-teacher boundaries? What are appropriate
student teacher boundaries? Is there a necessary limit to the personal, social, or even
sexual interaction that may be experienced between student and teacher without
compromising one's professional responsibilities? Does it make a difference if the
professional aspects of the relationship take place in the classroom, a laboratory, a
clinical setting, or if they are of an administrative nature? Does it make a difference
whether it is the student or teacher who initiates an increasingly close relationship? How
should one handle social or sexual overtures made by a student? What can we do, as
individuals, as professions, and as institutions to help ensure that appropriate
student-teacher boundaries are maintained?
This paper will explore these questions in light of recent concerns
expressed about boundaries between professionals and clients,2-7 sexual harassment in the academic setting,8,9 and recent data suggesting a high frequency of sexual interaction
between graduate students and teachers.10-12
BACKGROUND
In early Greek and Roman times, sexual relationships between youth and
their mentors were often considered to be a normal extension of a close male bonding, both
in the study of philosophy and in the training of warriors. There were mixed feelings
about this practice, however, and some writings encouraged the practice of
"bundling" -- the requirement that a cloak separate the mentor and student
during periods of repose. Teacher-student sexual relationships were considered exploitive
by many, and this concern may have contributed to the strong feelings about homosexual
behavior, even between adults, that persist to this day.13
Since those times, little concern has been expressed about boundary
limitations in mentoring relationships, except for a tacit acceptance of the "casting
couch" phenomenon that is assumed to persist in widespread fashion, especially when
women are dependent upon men for mentoring and advancement14
(p. 132). However, a number of authors have questioned the appropriateness of sexual
interaction in teacher-student relationships even when they are consensual. Studies have
come from two rather separate bodies of literature. Some research has emerged from a
growing concern about sexual exploitation of clients by professionals, primarily in the
mental health professions,2,11,12
but also in such fields as medicine, law, and religion.3,6,7,15 More recently, extensions of
the literature on sexual harassment in the academic setting have addressed the issue as
well.10,16
Glaser and Thorpe11 received survey
responses from 44 percent (464) of the female members of the Clinical Psychology Division
of the American Psychological Association. Of these, 31 percent reported receiving
advances from psychology educators either prior to or during a working relationship, and
17 percent reported intimate sexual contact (defined as intercourse or direct genital
stimulation) with at least one psychology educator during graduate training. Of those, 33
percent considered it a hindrance to the working relationship in retrospect, while 19
percent did so at the time of the relationship. Over 95 percent of all the respondents
considered such relationships to be ethically inappropriate, coercive or exploitive, or
potentially harmful to the working relationship.
In a study of 235 male faculty members from all departments of "a
prestigious research-oriented university," Fitzgerald et al.10
found that 26 percent reported sexual involvement with women students. Schneider16 studied 356 graduate women from a number of disciplines, and
found that 9 percent reported coercive dating and sex with members of the faculty. Of the
13 percent who engaged in consensual dating with members of faculty, 30 percent
experienced "pressure to be sexual." Comments given by respondents in both of
these studies reflected a full range of opinion among both former students and faculty
members. On one hand, some felt that any mutually consenting activity is acceptable.
Others felt that even consensual relationships are, at the least, unwise, as they confuse
boundaries, threaten objectivity, and because there is no way to predict a
"successful" relationship. Still others noted more serious consequences of such
relationships, including threats or harassment from a spurned faculty lover, resignation
of students from their programs, and strong feelings of isolation and embarrassment.
Concern about the potential problems resulting from consensual sexual
relationships between faculty and students has led some universities to enact formal
policies16 and others to set less formal guidelines for
faculty behavior.17 The revised Code of Ethics of the
American Psychological Association18 which went into effect
in December 1992, includes an explicit prohibition against "sexual relationships with
students or supervisees over whom the psychologist has evaluative or direct authority,
because such relationships are so likely to impair judgement or be exploitive." As
before, the ethical standards also warn against other kinds of "dual" or
"multiple" relationships with those to whom one provides professional services.
Some examples will be given later in this paper.
Despite these few recent developments, it is clear that there is still
a substantial level of confusion in the academic community about the basis for any such
standards. In general, teachers are given little or no guidance as to how to deal with
this issue. It is not helpful either to us or to our students to say, simply, "Just
say no." We need to develop a sound understanding as to where appropriate boundaries
ought to be, under what circumstances, and why this is important. The remainder of this
paper will attempt to develop a framework for discussion of this issue, based on the
considerable literature arising from cases in the health professions and a consideration
of what constitutes a productive mentoring relationship.
CONSENSUAL VS. FIDUCIARY RELATIONSHIPS
Feldman-Summers4 defines a fiduciary
relationship as "a special relationship in which one person accepts the trust and
confidence of another to act in the latter's best interest." "In such a
relationship," writes Jorgenson,6 "the parties do
not deal on equal terms. The fiduciary must act with the utmost good faith and solely for
the benefit of the dependent party." "There is no doubt," continues
Feldman-Summers,4 "that physicians, psychiatrists, mental
health counselors, and attorneys are 'fiduciaries.' It may be argued that other
professionals, such as teachers, should be included under the heading of 'fiduciaries.'
That is, it may be argued that students -- even college students -- often place trust and
confidence in their teachers in a manner similar to that observed in, say, the
therapist-client relationship, especially when the teacher is sought out for individual
guidance and assistance."
Rutter15 takes the position that a
"forbidden zone always exists in the relationship between doctor and patient,
therapist and client, clergyman and congregant, lawyer and client, teacher and student.
All of these professions carry a special trust not to abuse the seen or unseen dependent
elements that inevitably develop." Because of the greater power of the professional,
the client is unable to give truly informed consent, and it is thus the responsibility of
the person in the more powerful position to control the necessary boundary between the two
parties.3,7,15
The extension of this position to the academic setting was well stated
by Henry Rosovsky, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, in a
1983 letter to his faculty.17 "Amorous relationships
that might be appropriate in other circumstances are always wrong when they occur between
any teacher or officer of the University and any student for whom he or she has a
professional responsibility. Further, such relationships may have the effect of
undermining the atmosphere of trust on which the educational process depends. Implicit in
the idea of professionalism is the recognition by those in positions of authority that in
their relationships with students there is always an element of power. It is incumbent
upon those with authority not to abuse, nor seem to abuse, the power with which they are
entrusted.... Other amorous relationships between members of the faculty and students,
occurring outside the instructional context, may also lead to difficulties. In a personal
relationship between an officer and a student for whom the officer has no current
professional responsibility, the officer should be sensitive to the constant possibility
that he or she may unexpectedly be placed in a position of responsibility for the
student's instruction or evaluation. Relationships between officers and students are
always fundamentally asymmetric in nature."
THE MENTORING RELATIONSHIP
Although all teacher-student relationships include a level of
dependency, the extent of this dependency and thus the need for firm boundaries may be
said to vary with different situations, and this may have implications for policy making
or in the assessment of a given situation. A teacher and student may simply be at the same
institution and have no direct relationship. On the other hand, there may be a reasonable potential
for a relationship to occur, for example in the case of a department chairman or dean, on
whom the student may need to depend at some point.17 A
classroom situation may or may not involve one-on-one contact between teacher and student,
but there is almost always an evaluative component to the relationship, which demands a
certain level of objectivity and distance. Finally, there are one-on-one mentoring
relationships initiated for the purpose of direct supervision of the student's learning.
It is in such relationships that the need for both closeness and boundaries are at their
greatest. Clinical supervision in the mental health professions carries special needs for
appropriate boundaries because of their relative levels of intensity, intimacy, personal
disclosure, and isolation2,5
Levinson19 (p. 98) has discussed the
importance of a mentoring experience in professional development and highlighted some of
the important characteristics of such relationships. As teacher, the mentor's role
is to enhance the student's skills and intellectual development. As a sponsor, he
uses his influence to facilitate the student's entry and advancement into the profession.
In his role as guide, he welcomes the initiate into a new occupational and social
world and acquaints him with its values, customs, resources and cast of characters. As exemplar,
he serves as one whom the student can emulate. He may sometimes serve as a counselor
in times of stress. And finally, he is hopefully a believer in the student's dream
for professional development.
In an academic environment, the mentor must also serve as an evaluator
of the student's performance. This role may be reflected in relatively immediate
functions, such as grading, or in more temporally indefinite functions such as the writing
of letters of recommendation for advanced training, licensure, or career opportunities.
There are a number of issues that various authors have considered
important in defining the mentor's role. The first is what Levinson19
(p. 99) calls the parent-peer balance. He writes that, "the mentor's primary
function is to be a transitional figure. The mentor represents a combination of parent and
peer; he must be both and not purely either one. If he is entirely a peer, he cannot
represent the advanced level toward which the younger man is striving. If he is very
parental, it is difficult for both of them to overcome the generational difference and
move toward the peer relationship that is the ultimate (though never fully realized) goal
of the relationship." He goes on to say that this parent-peer relationship tends to
vary somewhat based on the relative ages of mentor and student.
Next is the issue of mutuality,1 and
this is probably where the challenge of the mentoring relationship to maintain appropriate
boundaries becomes greater than in other professional relationships. As good teachers, we
expect our students to contribute to our own professional growth. We learn from what they
read, we want to be challenged by their questions, and we like to see their success as
reflecting, at least in part, on our own professional expertise and devotion to them.
A part of this mutuality is our social interaction with our
students, especially in a close academic environment.1,20
Such social interactions serve a number of important functions. They can enhance working
relationships in the training environment. They help acquaint the student with the people
and the culture of the profession he or she is planning to enter. They may help contribute
to the personal development of the student. And such activities reflect a concern with the
development of the whole person, not only a well-educated professional.
While the importance of mutuality and social interaction may appear to
threaten necessary boundaries to some extent, there is another vital element to the
teacher-student relationship that more than outweighs that threat, and that is the
teacher's obligation to foster independence and autonomy in his or her students. In this
way, our role as teacher is similar to that of a parent or a therapist. In an article
outlining the characteristics of a helping relationship, Rogers21
wrote about the importance of warmth, caring, liking, and interest, all of which reflect a
degree of closeness to our clients. But he also discussed the need for separateness, and
of not being compromised in our helping role by our client's helplessness, dependency,
depression or love.
Kopp22 wrote of the need to have
"gurus" in our lives to guide us at critical times. However, he states
emphatically that "the teaching mission of the guru is to free his followers from him
(p. 19)." "There are no mothers or fathers for grown-ups," he says,
"only sisters and brothers. We must each give up the master without giving up the
search (p. 188)." Clearly then, prolonging the dependency of the student tends to
work against the very intent of the relationship -- that is, to enhance the ability of the
student to function as an independent professional.
The mentoring relationship traditionally has held special problems for
women.8,15,16,19,23 Sheehy14 (p. 132) observed that
"female mentors have been particularly scarce. And when a man becomes interested in
guiding and advising a younger woman, there is usually an erotic interest that goes along
with it. What follows from that are many combinations we can easily recognize: producer
and star, professor and graduate student, doctor and nurse, director and actress, and so
on. The kicker is that the relationship of guide and seeker gets all mixed up with a
confusing sexual contract. On the other hand, career women who haven't had a mentor
relationship miss it, even if they don't know what to call it. Almost without exception,
the women I studied who did gain recognition in their careers were at some point nurtured
by a mentor."
Rutter15 wrote that, "a man in a
position of power over a woman holds a sacred trust to guard her welfare, guide her safely
into life in the wider world, and eventually share the power with her so that she can, if
she wishes, leave him and go her own way. When a woman is in the position of power, she,
too, holds this responsibility."
Where, then, do we set our boundaries? Conroe and Schank2
suggested a guideline, at least with regard to clinical supervision, emphasizing the
importance of finding a balance that suits the situation at hand. "Boundaries,"
they wrote, "should be firm enough to allow the supervisor to set appropriate limits
and to provide necessary feedback but open enough to allow the supervisee to explore even
the most sensitive personal issues as they arise in counseling and supervision."
BOUNDARY VIOLATIONS
The importance of appropriate boundaries is not restricted to sexual
contact per se, even though that has been the focus of most of the attention in
this area. Sexual involvement not only has profound symbolic significance in a
relationship, but it is relatively easy to define in operational terms. However, there are
many other behaviors that reflect either the emergence of a "dual relationship"
or an exploitation of the student's dependency and trust to meet one's own needs.7 For example, faculty members may get students caught up in
political issues they are dealing with within the institution or may take advantage of
some special ability or connection a student may have. We may treat students
differentially, not because of their academic or clinical qualifications, but because of a
personal regard or attraction. We may disclose information of a personal nature that is
more a reflection of our own needs or our isolation than of a true interest in the
student's professional or personal growth. Boundaries, therefore, refer to a spectrum of
activities that have the potential to exploit the dependency of a student in a number of
ways.
Boundary violations compromise the integrity and effectiveness of the
student-teacher relationship.17 At the very least, the
existence of a dual relationship makes it difficult to evaluate or to provide feedback in
an objective manner. If the professional relationship is an administrative one, the
student may lose a potential resource for assistance in areas such as financial aid,
career counseling, and so on. A dual relationship can confuse roles for the student, who
is no longer sure what the relationship to his or her mentor should be.14,15 The continued dependency fostered by a boundary violation tends to
inhibit the student's development as an independent professional, and perhaps as a person
as well. As Sheehy14 (p. 132) has written, a woman who
becomes intimately involved with her mentor "may have a difficult time finding her
own equilibrium because her professional, emotional and sexual nourishment are all piped
in from the same person. And eventually, that person is too much like her father for her
own developmental good."
Students who have become sexually involved with their mentors have been
known to modify or abandon their educational programs out of a sense of confusion and
embarrassment.8,16 They may be dismissed
from a program on an academic pretense, again raising the question as to whose
responsibility it should have been to maintain boundaries in the first place.
The perception by others in the academic environment that there may be
a "favorite child" can only threaten working relationships in the group. The
known existence of a sexual relationship and its tacit acceptance by the academic
community reduces the tendency to discuss the issue openly, either as an institutional
issue, or as an issue in clinical supervision.2 The acceptance
of boundary violations also provides poor role modeling for future teachers and
professionals.
Finally, one must consider the potential of personal harm to the
student, especially if there is a history of poor self-esteem, dependency, or
victimization. As with patients who become over-involved with their therapists, the
betrayal of trust and sense of loss can sometimes lead to depression and a need for
psychiatric care.5
PREVENTION
What can be done to help ensure that appropriate, healthy boundaries
will be maintained in student-teacher relationships? First, we need to be aware of risk
factors -- those things that may lead to a blurring of appropriate boundaries.4,12
The gender relationship between student and teacher is itself a risk
factor, just given the sheer probability of an erotic attraction. There are a number of
factors that could reflect a psychological vulnerability on the part of the student, such
as low self-esteem, a need for authority, a pattern of repeated victimization, or
difficulties with a personal relationship. "Transference" issues can come up in
a close mentoring relationship just as readily as in a therapeutic relationship. For
example, a student may see her teacher as the kind of father she wished she had.
There are risk factors for the teacher as well. As with therapists, we
sometimes see a pattern of predatory sexism related to a characterological impairment.2 This may be reflected in a series of repeated relationships, or
deliberate manipulation of a professional relationship to meet personal needs. Attempts by
the student to terminate the disturbing aspects of such a relationship often result in
either intimidation or dependent, demanding entreaties on the part of the professional.
Teachers may exhibit their own psychological vulnerabilities, which
play out in relationships with their students. There may be times of our lives when we
begin to doubt our attractiveness or our effectiveness and feel that we need to test
ourselves. Most of us get into the business of helping partly to satisfy our own
narcissistic needs. We need to be needed, and that sometimes makes it hard to let go of
our charges. We may be experiencing difficulties in our own personal relationships, and it
becomes tempting to reach out to a student who, at the very least, respects who we are and
what we do. Even if we do not take such an initiative, we may find it harder to resist the
initiative made by a needy or seductive student who hopes that we can fill personal needs
that transcend our role as mentors.
Finally, there is a set of risk factors that are inherent in the
professional or institutional setting itself. White24 has
referred to this phenomenon as "organizational incest." In his characterization,
the demands of our professional lives can shut us off from the nurturance that we should
be getting from outside the organizational setting. To the extent that the boundaries
separating us from these outside sources of nurturance become impermeable, either because
of our own self-imposed commitment or because of the demands imposed upon us by the
institution itself, we may tend to turn our professional, social, and even sexual energies
inward, creating a "closed system." This can also occur in a professional dyadic
relationship. For example, a faculty member experiencing little collegial support from
other faculty members, may depend excessively on the loyalty, sympathy and support of a
devoted student.1 One of the ways of minimizing organizational
incest is to acknowledge the importance of outside relationships in our lives by including
significant others of both faculty and students in some of our social activities.20
In addition to being aware of the risk factors, there are a few other
ways we can monitor our boundaries with students. We need to be honest with ourselves
about whose needs we are meeting, when we invite a student to work with us, when we decide
which students we may involve in a special project or in a social engagement, or to whom
we tend to disclose certain kinds of personal information. We may sometimes need to see if
there are other ways for us to get certain of our own needs met, whether at home, in
therapy, or through our colleagues.
We also need to treat the challenge of maintaining appropriate
student-teacher boundaries as an open issue. This should be done both in the orientation
of new faculty members and as a part of the training and supervision of our students. The
maintenance of healthy boundaries is not only something that teachers need to do in their
own relationships with students. We need also to prepare our students to monitor
boundaries with their own students, patients, and clients. We can help them develop this
awareness by exploring this issue as a part of their training and by modeling appropriate
professional behavior in our own relationships with them. Finally, we can help develop
institutional guidelines and policies that reflect a commitment to the maintenance of
appropriate student-teacher boundaries.2,8,9,16
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