Are We Talking About the Same Child? Parent-Teacher Ratings of Preschoolers’ Social-Emotional Behaviors

Abstract

The parent‐teacher agreement has become an important issue of children's psychological assessment. However, the amount of research available for preschool children is small and mainly based on one index of agreement with samples of modest size/representativeness. This study examined parent‐teacher agreement (correlations) and discrepancies (t tests) on preschoolers' social skills and problem behaviors for the normative Portuguese sample (N = 1,000) of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales – 2nd Edition (PKBS‐2). Analyses were replicated according to the child's gender and mothers' educational level. Correlational analyses suggest weak to moderate informant agreement (mean correlation = .32). Parents' and teachers' ratings are significantly different for all PKBS‐2 scores, with parents assigning higher scores both on social skills and problem behaviors. Results highlight the importance of both parents' and teachers' perspectives to achieve a more comprehensive picture of preschoolers' social‐emotional behaviors, and reinforce the evidence of reliability of the PKBS‐2 Portuguese version.

Relations of social‐emotional functioning and kindergarten academic achievement in children of immigrants

“…The demography of immigrant families continues to shift relatively rapidly, potentially impacting students’ behavioral functioning (Zong & Batalova, ). Further, differences between the current study findings and previous literature may be due to variations in how social‐emotional skills were operationalized and measured, or in differences in raters as parents and teachers may rate children's social‐emotional behaviors differently, particularly in diverse samples (e.g., Major, Seabra‐Santos, & Martin, ).…”

Informant discrepancies in the rating of Chinese preschoolers' approaches to learning: Looking for the role of parent–teacher relationships

“…In the first approach, we calculated inter‐class (Pearson r s) and intra‐class correlation coefficients (ICCs) to determine parent–teacher agreement for each of the PLBS subscales. Both bivariate correlations and ICCs have been used as indexes for cross‐informant agreement in the literature (Fält, Wallby, Sarkadi, Salari, & Fabian, 2018; Major et al, 2015). In the second approach, we conducted paired sample t ‐tests to compare parents' and teachers' average ratings on each PLBS subscale.…”

“…Because of young children's inability to provide valid self‐reports, it is common practise to rely on adults to rate child behaviours in developmental research (Major, Seabra‐Santos, & Martin, 2015). As important socialization agents, parents and teachers are important informants of young children's behaviours; yet their ratings often diverge.…”

“…Empirical studies suggested only weak to moderate informant agreement between parent and teacher ratings on children's social–emotional behaviours (e.g., De Los Reyes et al, 2015; Gresham, Elliott, Cook, Vance, & Kettler, 2010). However, existing studies concerning informant discrepancies have focused primarily on school‐aged children in Western contexts (Major et al, 2015). The current study was situated in the Chinese preschool context and aimed at examining informant discrepancies between parent and teacher ratings of preschoolers' approaches to learning—a set of learning styles and behaviours, such as motivation, persistence, and disposition towards learning, which influence how children approach learning situations (Bustamante, White, & Greenfield, 2017).…”

Preschool teachers and classroom aides: Same context, similar perceptions of children's behaviors?

“…In Portugal (where the present study was conducted), for instance, this number increased from 6,528 in 1960, to 264,660 in the 2014–2015 school year, according to data from the General Office of Statistics for Education and Science (Direção‐Geral de Estatísticas da Educação e Ciência, 2016). Based on this growing number of children attending preschool education in recent years, teachers have been recognized as playing a powerful and significant role in children's lives (Dobbs & Arnold, ; Hutchings et al., ), which also justifies the increasing number of studies in the literature in reference to parent–teacher agreement (e.g., Major, Seabra‐Santos, & Martin, ; Rescorla et al., ; Winsler & Wallace, ). Therefore, the school has become a key context in the assessment process, where academic, social, emotional, and behavioral data is available.…”