The role of teachers’ perceived control and children's characteristics in interactions between 6‐year‐olds and their teachers

Abstract

The study aimed at an understanding of child-teacher interactions in school preparatory classrooms. Relations between observed interactions and sex of the child, teachers' ratings of their perceived control, and of children's undercontrolled and overcontrolled problem behaviors, social competence and work efficiency were studied. Thirty-six teachers and 92 six-year-olds, 39 girls and 53 boys, from 19 classrooms were directly observed on 2-5 occasions during a total mean of 60 minutes per child. The results showed that interactions involving teacher support behaviors were the most common, but comparatively less well explained by the predictors. Associations were found between perceived control and two types of teacher command interactions. For teacher commands initiated by child externalizing behavior, the relation with perceived control was shown to hold for boys only. Male sex and rated undercontrolled problems were predictive of more interactions initiated with externalizing behaviors and also of more restrictive teacher responses following child positive behaviors. Overcontrolled children, who had teachers high in perceived control, were more often met with support behavior when they were off-task. It was concluded that teacher perceptions of control and of child behaviors as well as sex of the child contribute to ongoing processes in preschool classrooms and that the chosen methodology could be used to further the search for factors affecting interactions in preschool settings.

Changes in externalizing and internalizing behaviours over a school-year: differences between 6-year-old boys and girls

“…Teachers have often expressed that it is more difficult to control externalizing behaviours in boys than in girls (Ebbeck, 1984;Hammarberg and Hagekull, 2002;Stephenson et al, 2000). As a means to reduce externalizing behaviours, boys often receive both positive and negative responses from their teachers (Hagekull and Hammarberg, 2004). Also negative feedback may act as positive reinforcement and thus counteract teachers' intentions to reduce such behaviours.…”

“…In another sample of 84 children (M ¼ 68:6 months, S:D: ¼ 3:4 months) test-retest correlations over a mean interval of 26 days (S:D: ¼ 6:5 days) were r ¼ 0:86 for externalizing behaviours and r ¼ 0:82 for internalizing behaviours. In a sub-sample of the children in the present study (n ¼ 92), correlations between independent observations in the classroom and teacher ratings of the children amounted to rð90Þ ¼ 0:30, p50:01 for externalizing behaviours and rð90Þ ¼ 0:22, p50:05 for internalizing behaviours (Hagekull and Hammarberg, 2004).…”

“…As children grow older they become more selective in their play preferences and they play more with members of their own gender, and children are probably rewarded by both peers and teachers for same-gender behaviour (Fagot, 1994). In recent research we have shown that child gender as well as teachers' perceptions of the child's problem behaviours were related to teachers' observed interactions with the children (Hagekull and Hammarberg, 2004). In general, boys were involved in more teacher interactions than girls, especially those pertaining to teachers' restricting and commanding behaviours.…”

Teacher-reported effects of the Playing-2-gether intervention on child externalising problem behaviour

“…Future research should investigate whether these findings also hold for female preschoolers, as, on average, they tend to exhibit lower levels of EPB (e.g. Dishion et al, 1995;Hagekull & Hammarberg, 2004;Rutter et al, 2003). Research does point to sex differences in the effect of interventions targeting child EPB (e.g.…”

“…In addition, boys generally show higher levels of EPB than girls (e.g. Dishion, French, & Patterson, 1995;Hagekull & Hammarberg, 2004;Rutter, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003).…”