Handbook of psychology volume 7 educational psychology

214

Relationships Between Teachers and Children

school climate and the quality of child-teacher relationships

share a mutually reciprocal association (Solomon, Watson,

Battistich, Schaps, & Delucci, 1992; 1996). In fact, defini-

tions of climate frequently refer to the role of child-teacher

relationships as a key component of climate:

School climate refers to the quality and consistency of interper-

sonal interactions within the school community that influence

children’s cognitive, social, and psychological development.

(Haynes, Emmons, & Ben-Avie, 1997, p. 322)

The teacher plays the critical role in creating a classroom that

students experience as a caring community . . . by sharing con-

cern for all students and being sincerely interested in their ideas,

experiences, and products. (Solomon et al., 1992, p. 384)

One source of information about school climate comes

from interventions aimed at changing climate. These inter-

ventions are often aimed at changing relationships in the

school and creating a sense of community (Baker, Terry,

Bridger, & Winsor, 1997). For example, the goals of the

Caring Communities approach are to help children “feel psy-

chologically safe, responsibly connected to others, [and]

practice ethical decision making and self-governance in the

microcosm of the classroom” (Baker et al., 1997, p. 598).

These are similar to those of the Comer School Development

Program (Haynes, 1998), which includes an emphasis on

caring and sensitivity of school personnel and access to the

school’s resources (personal and social as well as material

and instructional). Furthermore, the Child Development

Project (CDP; e.g., Battistich et al., 1997) places a great em-

phasis on students’ feeling emotionally supported by teachers

and on cultivating a school climate in which emotional re-

sources are available and flow readily as needed. Kasen,

Johnson, and Cohen (1990), in their review of the school cli-

mate literature, described student-teacher relationships as a

central facet of school climate and proposed that the various

dimensions of school climate described in the literature can

be organized into three domains: task orientation, relation-

ships, and order. School climate and classroom climate have

a relational component that is fundamental to their descrip-

tion and influence.

When considering the role that school climate plays in

relation to child-teacher relationships, the pathways by

which this association might occur is likely to be somewhat

circuitous. Most of the evidence available suggests that cli-

mate alters the behavior and expectations of students and

teachers—it creates standards that shape these components of

the child-teacher relationship. As reported by Battistich et al.

(1997), in classrooms with improved climate children had

a greater sense of community, exhibited more prosocial

interactions, were better at social problem solving and

conflict resolution, and scored higher on reading comprehen-

sion tests. They also liked school better, were more empa-

thetic and motivated, and had higher self-esteem as compared

with children in schools that did not receive the intervention.

Clearly, based on the perspective described in earlier sec-

tions, one would expect relational behaviors and perceptions

between teachers and children to be more positive and less

conflictual under these conditions.

Yet relations between school climate and the components

of the child-teacher relationship system are complex. It

appears that climate interacts with child variables such as

child age, sex, and socioeconomic status (Kasen et al., 1990)

such that child-teacher conflict and academic focus declined

and autonomy increased in schools attended by older stu-

dents. Schools characterized by higher socioeconomic status

were described as having lower conflict and greater auton-

omy. An interaction of dimensions of climate on child symp-

toms was also informative. In schools with high conflict,

social facilitation led to greater symptoms of externalizing

behavior problems, whereas in schools with low conflict, so-

cial facilitation led to decreased symptoms of externalizing

behavior problems (Kasen et al., 1990).

Middle school children’s positive perceptions of school are

related to their motivation, achievement, and emotional func-

tioning (Roeser et al., 1998). Middle school students who had

higher levels of motivation and emotional well-being also felt

their schools were more developmentally appropriate in the

teacher-student interactions, practices, and norms (this is espe-

cially important because many middle schools are less sup-

portive of the developmental needs of students than are

elementary schools). Middle schools can be developmentally

appropriate by encouraging positive teacher-child interactions;

by espousing instructional techniques that emphasize progress

or improvement, effort, and mastery as goals; and by not

emphasizing competition and comparisons among students

(Roeser et al., 1998). Teacher-student interactions that lead stu-

dents to feel supported by their teachers, as well as smaller

communities of teachers and students, are also important in en-

hancing young adolescents’ motivation and emotional well-

being (Roeser et al., 1998). As a result, it appears that climate

and teacher-child relationship quality have reciprocal influ-

ences in the middle school years.

This point about the bidirectionality of climate and child-

teacher relationships is underscored in work related to school

violence and antisocial behavior (Farmer, 2000). When look-

ing at problems with antisocial behavior in the school con-

text, not only does antisocial behavior influence the climate

of the school, but the school social context influences the

Dimensions, Typologies, and Developmental Change in Child-Teacher Relationships

215

expression of antisocial behaviors (Farmer, 2000). Research

and intervention paradigms must be multilevel and attendant

to the bidirectional influences that transact across and within

levels over time.

Summary

As a final note, it is important to recognize that child-adult

relationships are asymmetric and that the relative degree of

asymmetry is subject to considerable variation across age,

grade, or schools. These changes in asymmetry are not well

understood, and the lack of coordination or calibration

between the child’s emergent developmental capacities for

relationship and the school system’s provision of support

for those capacities (Magnusson & Stattin, 1998) is consid-

ered to be a primary locus of concern related to children’s

competencies (Eccles & Roeser, 1998).

In sum, available evidence from diverse literatures on

child and teacher attributes, representations of relationships,

child-teacher interactions and communication, and school

and classroom climate can be integrated within a systems

conceptualization of the child-teacher relationship. In so

doing these diverse literatures provide complementary and

converging information about the unique role of each of

these components and the importance of a focus on them in

their own right, as well as confirming the view that because

of the bidirectional intertwining of their relations with one

another, each component is best viewed within a systems

perspective.

DIMENSIONS, TYPOLOGIES, AND

DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE IN

CHILD-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS

Because relationships are systems, a relationship is more than

simply the sum of interactions, representations, and charac-

teristics of the two individuals involved. Instead, relation-

ships are a product of the dynamic, reciprocal interactions of

these components over time and over hundreds of occasions.

When it comes to describing the quality of relationships—

the dimensions along which relationships vary—one must

approach the task from multiple points of view using multiple

assessments of relational components. Relationships can be

described from the inside and from the outside, with data on

perceptions, behaviors, and beliefs of the child and of the

teacher. Any one source of this knowledge about relation-

ships is almost always an indirect and incomplete assessment.

Because they are systems (e.g., Lerner, 1998; Magnusson &

Stattin, 1998), for Sroufe (1989a, 1996) relationships are a

form of organization; they follow rule structures in their ac-

tions; and their components are rule-governed as well. The

patterns and rules in relationships suggest that their activity is

nonrandom; they can be studied formally and can be reliably

described. Description of relationships is then, by necessity,

best when informed by multiple perspectives, by multiple

methods, across multiple occasions, and in multiple contexts.

One concern when reviewing the available data on child-

teacher relationships is the extent to which conclusions con-

cerning these dimensions are driven by the use of a particular

method or form of assessment. Caution is in order, particu-

larly because this literature is fairly new, because large-scale,

multimethod, multiinformant studies are rare, and because

longitudinal or even cross-sectional data at different ages

are uncommon. The following discussion is organized

according to descriptions of relationships using data sources

that emanate from the child, the teacher, or observations.

The Child’s View

Children have often been asked about qualities of their rela-

tionships with teachers, usually using questionnaire methods,

in terms of constructs such as teacher support and liking,

classroom climate, relatedness, and so on.

Wellborn and Connell’s (1987) Relatedness Scale has been

used in several studies with children who range in age and

risk level (Lynch & Cicchetti, 1992, 1997; Toth & Cicchetti,

1996), reliably describing variations in children’s perceptions

on two dimensions of relationship experience: emotional

quality and psychological proximity seeking. Emotional qual-

ity refers to the range of emotions (positive and negative) that

a child experiences with the teacher in an attempt to capture

the overall emotional tone of the relationship from the child’s

perspective. Psychological proximity seeking assesses the de-

gree to which children desire to be psychologically closer to

the adult. These two dimensions differentially relate (in pre-

dictable directions) to teachers’ descriptions of the children as

well as the children’s relational histories (Lynch & Cicchetti,

1992, 1997; Toth & Cicchetti, 1996).

From a person-centered perspective, Lynch and Cicchetti

(1992) have described procedures for deriving five patterns of

relatedness between children and teachers: optimal, adequate,

deprived, disengaged, and confused. Children with optimal

patterns report higher-than-average positive emotion and

lower-than-average psychological proximity seeking. De-

prived patterns are associated with lower-than-average emo-

tional quality and higher-than-average proximity seeking.

These children do not experience positive emotion and want

216

Relationships Between Teachers and Children

to be closer to the teacher. Children with disengaged patterns

report low emotional quality and low psychological proxim-

ity seeking. They are insecure and dissatisfied but do not

want to be closer to their teachers. Children with confused

patterns report high emotional quality and extremely high

proximity seeking. They seem very needy despite reporting

feeling secure. Finally, children with average patterns are in

the midrange on both dimensions.

Wentzel (1996) reported on a similar construct describing

the child-teacher relationship from the child’s perspective in a

sample of middle schoolers. Perceived Caring is a dimension

assessed using the Classroom Life Measure (Johnson,

Johnson, Buckman, & Richards, 1985) and reflects the degree

to which the child experiences social support and concern from

teachers. These perceptions are related to a range of teacher

behaviors as well as student outcomes (Wentzel, 1996).

Perceived support as a key dimension of relationships

between children and teachers even at older ages is confirmed

in a national survey of adolescents. When asked to identify

relationships that were emotionally supportive—someone

the youth could count on to understand and offer advice—

teachers were often listed in relation to this construct. In fact,

a factor associated with healthy outcomes was whether youth

reported having a relationship with an adult that they identi-

fied in this way, many of whom were teachers (Resnick et al.,

1997).

Aspects of teacher behavior that map onto feedback

processes in the model of teacher-child relationships can also

be assessed from the student’s perspective (Weinstein &

Marshall, 1984) by examining student ratings of the teacher

behavior, expectations, individual attention to the student, and

nurturance. Students’ evaluations of the degree to which they

perceive teacher expectations as fair, consistent, and accurate;

the degree to which they feel the teacher attends and responds to

their individual needs; and how caring or concerned the teacher

behaves toward them are related to motivational and behavioral

aspects of classroom adjustment (Wentzel, 1996).

Ryan et al. (1994) presented reports of more than 600 early

adolescents (seventh and eighth graders) using the Inventory

of Adolescent Attachments (assessing felt security and emo-

tional utilization; Greenberg, 1982) as well as self-report

measures of emulation of the teacher and motivation. Results

indicate that emotional quality of the child-teacher relation-

ship, as described by the felt security construct, was particu-

larly salient for these middle schoolers. Similarly, Bracken

and Crain (1994) presented findings from self-reported child-

teacher relationship qualities for 2,501 children between the

ages of 9 and 19, suggesting that dimensions of companion-

ship, emotional support, and trust can be reliably assessed and

used to describe these relationships.

Teachers’ Views

Teachers’ ratings or judgments of children’s problem behav-

ior, social competence, work habits, and even temperament

all provide indications of relational quality or factors that

influence relational quality. However, the focus of most of

these assessments is not relational in nature. As stated by

Lerner (1998), if one adopts the developmental systems point

of view, then the focus or nature of the key units of analysis

must be relational (Lerner, 1998). Drawing from this postu-

late, then, the items rated by informants and behaviors

observed in settings should have a relational nature or be of

relational form in order to provide information about the type

of organization (relationships) that could be most informative

about developmental processes (Lerner, 1998).

For this reason, Pianta and Nimetz (1991) began the study

of teachers’ views of their relationship with a specific child

with a focus on teacher perceptions of warmth, openness of

communication, and dependency, in their relationship with

a child using items reflecting teachers’ feelings about and

perceptions of the child’s relational behavior toward them—

not ratings of the child’s skills or abilities in general or

in other contexts. Analysis revealed that warmth and open

communication were highly correlated and formed a

closeness dimension, whereas kindergarten teachers viewed

dependency as a somewhat negative dimension. These con-

structs were moderately related to concurrent measures of

classroom adjustment in kindergarten, teacher ratings of

adjustment in first grade, and retention decisions (Pianta &

Nimetz, 1991).

Further conceptualization of child-teacher relationships

led to a focus on more overtly negative aspects of the rela-

tionship involving anger, conflict, and confusion. Initial

analyses reported that five correlated dimensions accounted

for kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of their relation-

ships with students: Conflict/Anger, Warmth/Closeness,

Open Communication, Dependency, and Troubled Feelings

(Pianta & Steinberg, 1992). The Conflict dimension indi-

cates that the teacher and child are frequently at odds with

each other (“This child and I are always struggling”). The

Warmth dimension assesses positive affect (“I share a warm

affectionate relationship with this student”), and Open Com-

munication measures the degree to which the child and

teacher communicate about personal items (“This student

shares information about him- or herself with me”). The De-

pendent dimension measures the child’s degree of develop-

mentally inappropriate dependency (“This child is always

seeking my help when its not necessary”), and the Troubled

Feelings dimension indicates the teacher’s being worried

about his or her inability to relate to the child.

Dimensions, Typologies, and Developmental Change in Child-Teacher Relationships

217

From a person-centered perspective, cluster analysis was

used to describe patterns of relationships with students

(Pianta, 1994). Six clusters of relationships were derived:

Dependent, Positively Involved, Dysfunctional, Functional/

Average, Angry/Dependent, and Uninvolved. Children whose

child-teacher relationships fell in different clusters differed

significantly in their adjustment in first-grade classrooms,

with the Dysfunctional and Angry/Dependent relationship

clusters showing the most problems. Relationships classified

as Angry were very high on the conflict dimension and very

low on warmth. Teachers experienced very high amounts of

negative emotion and very little amounts of emotional warmth

or personal contact with students in these relationships. Unin-

volved relationships were marked by the child’s strong ten-

dency to be uncommunicative about personal information

and not to rely on the teacher for help. In these relationships

children made very few emotional demands on their teacher.

Positively Involved relationships were characterized by

children’s showing behaviors toward their teachers that were

indicative of a secure relationship; they shared personal infor-

mation, appeared comfortable with dependency, but were not

too dependent, and they displayed positive affect in response

to the teachers’ interactions or in regard to their relationship

with the teacher. In the context of these relationships, teachers

felt warm and close to the child. In first grade, they were

clearly the most competent of the cluster groups. Children

with histories of Positively Involved relationships in kinder-

garten showed the fewest behavior problems and the highest

levels of competence behaviors in both the social and in-

structional areas. Dysfunctional child-teacher relationships

represent a group with needs for intervention. Teachers

characterized these relationships as filled with conflict and

anger, with little warmth and communication. These relation-

ships were emotionally very negative and also disconnected.

Teachers felt troubled by their inability to reach these children

and thought about them when not at work. Children for

whom these relationships were reported were also the least

competent in first grade, indicating that they were on a path

toward continued school problems in the social and academic

arenas and that some form of intervention was likely to

be needed in order to change the direction of their school

trajectories.

Recent cross-sample validations suggest that child-

teacher relationships assessed from teachers’ perspectives

can be reliably described by three dimensions: Conflict,

Closeness, and Dependency (Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins,

1995; Saft & Pianta, 2001). These dimensions have been

replicated with early elementary school samples from Illinois

(Birch & Ladd, 1997) and in a multistate study of children in

child care (Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team,

1995). Furthermore, these dimensions appear relatively sta-

ble from preschool into second grade (Howes, 2000b; Pianta

et al., 1995).

Teachers’ representations of their relationship with a tar-

get child have been assessed with respect to three broad

areas: (a) content or themes represented, (b) how the teacher

views him- or herself in relation to the child, and (c) the

affective tone of representations (Stuhlman & Pianta, in

press). Together, these three areas provide a fairly compre-

hensive view of representations with respect to a given

teacher-child relationship, from the teacher’s perspective.

The Content area includes scales such as Compliance,

Achievement, and Secure Base and reflects the degree to

which these themes are present in the teacher’s responses.

The Process area includes scales such as Perspective Taking

and Neutralizing/Avoidance of Negative Emotion, reflecting

the stance the teacher takes vis-à-vis the child’s expressed or

perceived needs. The Affect area includes scales such as

Positive and Negative Affect. These constructs can be reli-

ably detected in teachers’ narratives about their relationship

with a specific child and in turn are related to their behav-

ior toward the child in the classroom. It is important to note

that the constructs that reflect negativity in the teacher’s rep-

resentations (e.g., compliance, neutralizing, negative affect)

are more strongly related to observed behavior than are the

other dimensions (Stuhlman & Pianta, in press).

Observed Interactions Between Teachers and Children

Many classroom observation systems contain codes for

teacher-child interaction (e.g., Ladd & Price, 1987; Pianta

et al., 2002), and these systems can be used to glean informa-

tion from the classroom environment that is relevant for inter-

pretation of teacher-child relationships. Ladd et al. (1999)

reported using a Likert rating scale for capturing observed

emotional tone of child-teacher relationships as well as close-

ness and conflict. These investigators reported good reliability

for these constructs as well as relations of these dimensions to

other aspects of observed and reported behavior.

The Teacher Attachment Q-Set (Howes, Hamilton, &

Matheson, 1994; Pianta, Nimetz, & Bennett, 1997) is an

adaptation of the Attachment Q-Set (Waters, 1987; Waters &

Deane, 1985), which was designed to assess attachment

organization in young children with their mothers. The

Teacher Attachment Q-Set consists of 90 descriptions of

child behaviors derived from attachment theory and research

and thought to reflect different aspects of the child’s attach-

ment (e.g., “When upset the child seeks physical contact

from the parent”). These 90 items were derived from exten-

sive observations in home environments.