An Observational Assessment of Parent-Teacher Relationships in Infant-Toddler Classrooms to Examine Predictors of Cocaring Quality

19th Annual Psychology Undergraduate Research Colloquium - Second PlaceCocaring encompasses how parents and teachers work together in their caregiving roles to coordinate childrearing. Two critical components of cocaring that have demonstrated importance for child and parent well-being are support and undermining. Although cocaring has been studied via qualitative interviews and through questionnaires, my study sought to develop a more objective way to measure the quality of cocaring relationships by recording and coding parent- teacher interactions. This study also explored participants’ depression, anxiety and personality in an effort to identify risk factors for developing cocaring relationships with less support and greater undermining. Eighteen mother-teacher dyads, of a 6-to-36-month-old child, from 6 full- time, licensed childcare centers participated in this study and were video recorded two to four times. Additionally, participants completed several psychological questionnaires. 58 videos were collected and coded for 8 dimensions of cocaring quality. Results indicated strong inter-rater reliability for the 8 dimensions and appropriate theoretical associations amongst the individual dimensions, thus offering initial construct validity for the newly developed cocaring observational coding system. Analyses did not reveal any significant associations between teachers’ or parents’ psychological factors and observed cocaring support or undermining. This study offers future researchers and practitioners a new observational tool to assess cocaring relationships.ASC Undergraduate Research Scholarship from the College of Arts & Sciences at The Ohio State UniversitySummer Research Fellowship from the Office of Undergraduate Education at The Ohio State UniversityResearch Scholar Award from the Undergraduate Research Office at The Ohio State UniversityNo embargoAcademic Major: Psycholog