Associations Between Teacher-Child Relationships, Child Characteristics, and Children's Writing Quality in Kindergarten and First Grade

When children have positive relationships with their teachers during early education, they perform better on measures of language development (Burchinal et al., 2000a; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001) and overall academic competence (Burchinal et al., 2002; Hamre & Pianta, 2001, 2005) A positive teacher-child relationship may also be important for children learning to write, given the complex and personal nature of writing. Yet, scholars have not examined associations between teacher-child relationship quality and children’s early success in writing. The current study examined associations between quality of the teacher-child relationship (defined as teachers’ perceptions of closeness and conflict and children’s feelings about teachers), child characteristics (including gender and receptive language ability) and children’s writing quality in kindergarten and first grade. Results indicated teacher-child conflict was significantly associated with children’s writing quality, after accounting for grade level, initial reading status, and type of instruction. Children’s receptive language was positively associated with writing quality in kindergarten and first grade. Teacher-child closeness, children’s feelings about teachers, and child gender were not significantly associated with children’s writing quality. Findings of the study have important implications for research and practice. Attention to the importance of teacher-child relationship quality for children’s successful learning and development should be considered in future research studies