For our research, we purposefully selected nine teachers that were nominated by university-based teacher educators as expert. Furthermore, teachers needed to meet three criteria to be selected for this study: firstly, they had to be active within Dutch secondary education. We chose to select only in-service teachers, because pre-service teachers are often reserved in discussing controversial topics. Secondly, teachers needed to be willing to develop a lesson along the lines of our instruction. And finally, teachers had to have a well-established relationship with their pupils. That is why we asked the pupils to fill in the standardized and evaluated Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction. This questionnaire explicates the relationship between teacher and students along two axes: communion (i.e., warmth and closeness of the teacher) and agency (i.e., dominance and influence of the teacher). Research shows that pupils feel safe and comfortable to participate during class when their teachers score high on communion and agency. Therefore, we only included those teachers who scored high in those two areas. Nine teachers, six of them male and three female, met the criteria and were included.
