The quality of the teacher-child relationship: Antecedents and consequents for children's early school adjustment Doctoral

When children attempt to adjust to new school environments they face many challenges, one of them consisting of negotiating the complexities of interpersonal relationships with their teachers (Birch & Ladd, 1996). Those (early) teacher-child relationships can develop positively, being characterized by closeness or rather negatively, being characterized by conflict or (extreme) dependency of the child to the teacher (Pianta, Steinberg & Rollins, 1995). In the past decades, in several studies with young children, conflict and dependency were found to operate as a risk factor for children's early school adjustment, whereas closeness was found to support this adjustment. However, some important questions concerning this topic remain rather poorly investigated. First, only recently, research attention has gone to the quality of the teacher-child relationship as a source of resilience for children at risk for poorer school adjustment. Pianta, Hamre and Stuhlman (2003) concluded that there is still much to be learned about the degree to which child-teacher relationships can compensate for the negative effects of earlier experiences. Furthermore, the authors note that if teacher-child relationships are not positive or do not match with the developmental needs of the child, they can actually exacerbate the risk for early school adjustment difficulties. Research on the latter topic is lacking almost completely. Second, since teacher-child relationships have proven to be important in the prediction of early school adjustment, investigations into what determines the quality of those relationships are of great importance (Yoon, 2002). Quite some research has already been done on this topic, yet the focus has primarily been on child characteristics as possible antecedents of early teacher-child relationship quality. However, the class and particularly its teacher also can make a major contribution to the quality of the teacher-child relationship. As Pianta and his colleagues (2003) stated: Despite a general recognition that teacher characteristics and perceptions influence the practice of teaching, little is known about how [those features] impact the formation of their relationships with children (p. 207). Therefore, a call was made for further research to detect those individual characteristics and classroom practices of teachers, that can influence the quality of their relating to children (Meehan, Hughes, & Cavell, 2003). In our research, we will try to fill both gaps. First, we will evaluate the possible protective vs. vulnerability effect of the quality of teacher-child relationships on early school adjustment, more particularly for children at risk for early school adjustment difficulties, due to insecure attachment to parents or specific temperamental dispositions. Second, we will focus on the antecedents of early teacher-child relationships, not only attending child characteristics (i.e., the child’s attachment to parents and temperament), but also giving special attention to teacher practices as possible precursors of their relating to the children in their classroom. Additionally, special attention will go to the possible interactions between child and teacher features in the prediction of relationship quality. To address these questions, a total number of 239 children (in 36 classes) were followed during kindergarten. Three measurement occasions took place during the school year, with information of multiple informants (teachers, parents, children, peers and/or external observers) available on teacher-child relationship quality and school adjustment variables. Quality of attachment to the primary caregiver was assessed during home observations taking place before the school assessments. Temperament and teacher practices were both assessed using questionnaires and observational measurements. The data will be analyzed by means of multilevel or hierarchical linear modeling techniques, taking proper account of the structure of our data, with children embedded in classes. Moreover, multilevel models are especially designed to analyze variables from different levels simultaneously (Hox, 2002), as we want to do in our study, i.e., including variables from the child level (attachment and temperament) as well as the class level (teacher practices), in the prediction of teacher-child relationship quality.status: publishe