Teachers’ Perceptions of Teacher–Child Relationships: Links With Children’s Observed Interactions

Abstract

Research Findings: The present study examined associations between children's classroom interactions and teachers' perceptions of teacher-child relationships during 1 year of preschool. Teachers (n = 223) reported their perceptions of closeness and conflict in their teacher-child relationships in the fall and spring. Children's (n = 895) positive classroom interactions with teachers, peers, and learning activities and their negative interactions were observed midyear. Children's positive interactions with teachers and learning activities predicted teachers' perceptions of more closeness in the spring when we accounted for fall closeness. Children's negative interactions predicted teachers' perceptions of more relational conflict in the spring when we accounted for fall conflict. Children's positive peer interactions did not predict spring closeness or conflict. Implications regarding teachers' perceptions of teacher-child relationships and children's independently observed classroom interactions are discussed. Practice or Policy: Findings provide empirical evidence for an aspect of Pianta, Hamre, and Stuhlman's ( 2003) conceptual model of teacher-child relationships. Results indicate that children's classroom interactions may be a factor related to how teachers report on their relationships with children across 1 year of preschool. Findings point to links between a range of children's positive and negative interactions during typical instruction and teachers' relationship perceptions.

Using an Individualized Observational Measure to Understand Children’s Interactions in Underserved Kindergarten Classrooms

“…Moreover, the inCLASS captured individual differences between kindergarten students in the four domains. However, in three of the four inCLASS domains, including Teacher Interactions, Peer Interactions, and Task Orientation, standard deviations were about a third to half as large as those in other studies (e.g., Downer et al, 2010;Hartz et al, 2017), whereas limited variability and skewness that we observed for Negative Engagement matched other work (e.g., Downer et al, 2010;Vitiello et al, 2012). It should be noted, however, that the alphas for each domain in our study were lower than in other work, so comparisons should be considered with this in mind.…”

“…Furthermore, low-income educational settings, which disproportionately serve children of color, tend to be relatively more rigid and to be characterized by, on average, lower quality learning and interaction opportunities compared with more sociodemographically advantaged settings (Duncan & Murnane, 2014). Thus, extending existing work on the inCLASS Hartz, Williford, & Koomen, 2017;Slot & Bleses, 2018;Vitiello, Booren, Downer, & Williford, 2012), the present study investigates (a) the measure's applicability in a high-poverty, mostly African American kindergarten sample; (b) associations between inCLASS and teacher reports of children's social skills and learning behaviors; and (c) characteristics at the time point, child, and classroom levels that contribute to inCLASS scores.…”

Teacher–child relationships and classroom‐learning behaviours of children with developmental language disorders

“…Using teacher report to measure both relationship quality and classroom behaviour leads to a problem with shared method variance (Sabol and Pianta , Hartz et al . ). A limitation of our study is that we do not include multiple informants of relationship quality and children's behaviour.…”

Meta-Analysis and Common Practice Elements of Universal Approaches to Improving Student-Teacher Relationships

“…Only program components related to social, emotional, behavioral, and/or relational development were included. This was determined because social, emotional, behavioral, and relational development can affect interactions between teachers and students (e.g., Conroy et al, 2015), and positive STIs can affect the STR (Hartz et al, 2017). In addition, similar practices were combined to create practice elements.…”