Handbook of psychology volume 7 educational psychology

226

Relationships Between Teachers and Children

aggressive behavior in their classrooms. The authors con-

cluded that perhaps the greatest effects of the PATHS curricu-

lum are not linked to the number of discrete lessons that are

presented didactically to children; rather, effects are linked to

the degree to which teachers accept the PATHS model and gen-

eralize it to the way that they run their classroom (CPPRG,

1999), consistent with the bidirectionality of relation between

teachers’ beliefs and their behavior with children.

McConaughy et al. (1999) found that Parent-Teacher

Research Teams (P-TAR teams), in which parents and teacher

communicated about elementary-aged children considered at

risk for emotional disturbance to identify the child’s strengths

and potential goals, were effective at preventing at-risk chil-

dren from becoming identified with the label of “emotionally

disturbed” over and above teachers teaching whole-group so-

cial skills. The mechanism of this intervention may have been

to change teacher attitudes and behavior toward children be-

fore the children developed low self-esteem and poor social

interactions that would lead them farther toward behavior

problems, a process that altered perceptions of the child-

teacher relationship.

Shaftel and Fine (1997) emphasized the role that teachers’

subjective beliefs play in determining how child behaviors are

interpreted and responded to by teachers. Shaftel and Fine tar-

geted aspects of teaching style such as the amount of feedback

children receive, how long teachers present material in a sin-

gle modality and expect children to attend, or structural issues

such as how seating is arranged. They also suggest that an-

other important area to consider when planning interventions

is whether teachers manage their classrooms in ways that deal

appropriately with child behaviors and are perceived by the

children as fair and reasonable. These ideas are applied within

a consultation method that focuses on the classroom as a sys-

tem, when designing interventions for problem behaviors.

Dyad-Focused Approaches

Based on the success of fairly structured programs of parent

consultation and training (see Barkley, 1987; Eyberg &

Boggs, 1998), Pianta (1999) and Pianta and Hamre (2002)

developed the Students, Teachers, and Relationship Support

(STARS) system for consultation with teachers to enhance

their relationship with a specific child (or children) with

whom the teacher reports a problem in their relationship.

STARS is a multifaceted program targeting a teacher’s repre-

sentation of his or her relationship with a child and his or her

interactive behavior toward the child in the context of a sup-

portive relationship with a consultant.

The specific technique directed at improving child-teacher

interactions (and indirectly their beliefs about each other and

their relationship) is Banking Time. In Banking Time (Pianta,

1999; Pianta & Hamre, 2002) the teacher works with a con-

sultant and implements a regular regimen of between 5 and

15 min of individual time with a target child. The intervention

is called Banking Time because of the metaphor of saving up

positive experiences so that the relationship between teacher

and child can withstand conflict, tension, and disagreement

without deteriorating and returning to a negative state. The

child and teacher can draw on their accrued relationship cap-

ital and withdraw from the relationship resources that enable

them to interact effectively in times of stress. The teacher’s

behavior in these sessions is highly constrained in order to

produce changes in interaction and beliefs.

There is an emphasis in Banking Time sessions on the

child’s choice of activities and the regular occurrence of

sessions. Sessions are not contingent on the child’s good

behavior and neutral verbalizations from the teacher that do

not focus on the child’s performance of skills convey relational

messages of safety, support for exploration, or predictability

that help the child and teacher define their relationship.

Behavioral standards are implemented consistent with class-

room standards. These principles of Banking Time sessions

are very similar to Teacher Child Interaction Therapy (as

described by McIntosh et al., 2000), in which teachers engage

in nondirective sessions with children designed to enhance the

quality of their relationship.

The Banking Time technique acts on nearly every compo-

nent of a relationship between a child and adult; thus it is a

powerful source of pressure on the relationship system. First

and foremost it constrains the behavior of the adult. In so

doing, a variant of interaction is created between child and

adult that typically is viewed as different, novel, and better by

most child and adult participants. This constraining of adult

behavior in turn frees up the child to display behaviors (and

competencies) that are typically not seen in routine interac-

tions between teacher and child. The child often explores

at a higher level and shows interest in the teacher and the

teacher’s attention; in turn, the teacher’s perceptions (repre-

sentational beliefs) may change or at least be subject to reex-

amination. Feedback and exchange processes between

teacher and child are altered as well—especially if the teacher

utilized Banking Time sessions to impart a particular message

to the child. Banking Time sessions allow the teacher to build

credibility that supports these messages so that their words

have meaning for the child. In this way, new pathways or di-

mensions of feedback and communication between teacher

and child become possible as Banking Time is implemented.

The STARS approach also involves a set of other proce-

dures that act on teachers’ representations and beliefs.

These include videotaping interactions with children in the

Conclusions and Future Directions: Developmental Analysis of Child-Teacher Relationships

227

classroom for review with the consultant, engaging in reflec-

tion on relationships with children through directed inter-

views, and analyzing classroom practices related to instruction

and discipline. In combination with Banking Time sessions,

these techniques are a comprehensive approach to intervention

with child-teacher relationships.

PATHS (Greenberg et al., 1995), just described as a

classroom-level intervention, also has a focus on teacher-

child interactions and relationships. In one study teachers im-

plemented PATHS with specific regular and special education

children in the second and third grades (Greenberg et al.,

1995). This was designed to promote these children’s emo-

tional understanding as assessed through emotional vocabu-

lary, ability to recognize emotional cues, and ability to

connect emotions to personal experiences. Teachers were

trained to teach 60 30-min lessons on self-control, emotions,

and problem solving to their classes. Participating teachers

were observed and received consultation weekly in addition

to an initial training workshop. Children who received the

intervention had a larger emotional vocabulary, a more

advanced ability to connect basic emotions to personal expe-

riences, and a more advanced understanding of recognizing

emotional cues in others, and they believed that they could

manage their feelings more than the children who did not

receive the intervention (Greenberg et al., 1995). Children

with lower initial symptom levels (as measured by teacher

reports) were more likely to improve their emotional vocabu-

lary as a result of the intervention than were children with

highly elevated initial symptoms. 

Finally, Hughes and Cavell (1999) described an interven-

tion called Primetime for aggressive children that includes

enhancing the teacher-child relationship (in addition to other

relationship components and problem-solving skills train-

ing). The Primetime intervention espouses a relationship-

based perspective on competence and attempts to reduce

aggressive behavior by reorganizing the child’s relational

skills with parents, peers, and teachers. Primetime focuses on

building a mentoring relationship as a support and source of

skill training. Evaluations suggest that positive relationships

between the children and the mentors were related to reduced

levels of teacher-reported externalizing behavior. 

Summary

In sum, child-teacher relationships have been the focus of a

number of applications directed at improving child out-

comes. In some applications relationships are affected as a

by-product of interventions targeted at children’s skills or at

school organizations, whereas in other applications improve-

ments in child-teacher relationships are the specific focus of

the intervention. Results indicate that child-teacher relation-

ships can be improved as a consequence of direct and indirect

effects and that improvements in relational quality are corre-

lated with improved child outcomes, particularly in the do-

main of social adjustment.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS:

DEVELOPMENTAL ANALYSIS OF

CHILD-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS

Throughout this chapter we have emphasized the advantages

to be gained—conceptually, empirically, and practically—

from a developmental system analysis of child-teacher rela-

tionships. The arguments, review, and positions advanced as

a result of this analysis have confirmed this view and lead to

the following conclusions concerning these relationships.

1. In analysis of the complex assortment of child-, teacher-,

classroom-, school-, and community-level influences on

children’s adjustment in school settings, it is helpful to

focus on child-teacher relationships as a key unit of analy-

sis. A relational focus is an important conceptual advance

and may provide a means for understanding processes that

have been difficult to study.

2. Child-teacher relationships are themselves best character-

ized as multicomponent systems involving attributes of the

individuals involved, reciprocal, bidirectional processes

related to representation and exchange of information, and

embedded in ongoing interactions with school and com-

munity factors. These factors interrelate in complex ways,

and understanding the unit as a system provides impor-

tance conceptual and methodological leverage on this

complexity.

3. Across samples of children of diverse age, ethnicity, geo-

graphical region, and school profiles—and using multiple

methods of informant-based or observational assessment—

relationships between children and teachers are marked by

variation in the extent of emotional and interactional en-

gagement or involvement and in qualities of the emotional

experience of that involvement. Negativity appears to be a

particularly salient aspect of teachers’ relationship experi-

ence whereas emotional closeness, involvement, and sup-

port appear salient from the child’s perspective.

4. Across similarly diverse samples, variation in the quality

of child-teacher relationships is related in expected

directions to a number of concurrent and future indicators

of child outcomes in the domains of classroom adjust-

ment, motivation, and self-esteem; to beliefs about school

and schooling; to academic success; and to teachers’

228

Relationships Between Teachers and Children

perceptions and emotional-well being. Child-teacher rela-

tionships are also associated with indicators of the broader

school climate and organizational ethos. It is important to

note that there is converging evidence that these relations

between child-teacher relationships and child outcomes

are independent of other commonly used predictors of

those outcomes, providing support for the view that the

child-teacher relationship is a unique source of variation

in children’s experience.

5. Applications that focus on improving children’s’ experi-

ences in school—particularly applications that emphasize

social, emotional, or motivational aspects of school expe-

rience or that build on findings from naturalistic studies

of child-teacher relationships—demonstrate that child-

teacher relationships can be enhanced and that such

enhancements are related to improvements in child com-

petencies and perceptions as well as teacher confidence

and beliefs.

These conclusions establish fairly clearly that a decade of

research with a specific focus on child-teacher relationships

has been productive and fruitful. Clearly, a well-defined and

identifiable literature has developed and yielded information

of conceptual and applied benefit to educators and psycholo-

gists. Yet the literature is fairly new, and if its potential is to

be realized, several challenges lie ahead in terms of issues

that require attention in the next decade:

1. There is a need to examine domain-specificity in the

associations of child-teacher relationships with child out-

comes, teacher outcomes, and school climate variations.

For example, teacher-child conflict and emotional nega-

tivity appear to be more predictive of child outcomes in el-

ementary school than is teacher-child closeness (Hamre &

Pianta, 2001; Ladd et al., 1999), whereas emotional sup-

port experienced from teachers seems quite important in

middle school (see Eccles & Roeser, 1998). It is important

to establish, in either multi-age cross-sectional studies or

longitudinal studies, the extent to which different qualities

of child-teacher relationships are related to different out-

come domains for children and teachers, at different ages

or grades.

2. The extent to which associations between child outcomes

and child-teacher relationships are context specific (e.g.,

stronger for behavior in school vs. home settings) is an-

other area for analysis. Questions concerning whether

these relations are localized or specific to a given class-

room setting and whether they extend to other settings and

the extent to which context-specific or disperses associa-

tions extend longitudinally are of great interest.

3. For years there has been interest in the coherence in the

quality and form of relationships that children develop

with parents, teachers, and peers. From the view of rela-

tionships as the focal unit of analysis, examination of the

key relationships in which children are involved, with a

focus on the extent of similarity and dissimilarity (and the

personal and contextual correlates of similarity and dis-

similarity), will yield insights into the development of

personality and social relationships.

4. With regard to naturalistic and intervention research,

there is much to be learned from further understanding of

the degree to which child-teacher relationships can com-

pensate for the negative effects of earlier experiences.

The relative power of the child-teacher relationship to

alter or affect developmental trajectories in relation to es-

tablished and ongoing influence of the parents or peers

can provide insight into the plasticity of developmental

processes as well as fuel advances in school policy and

programming.

5. There is a dire need for further integration among the con-

stituencies involved in research and theory on child-

teacher relationships and for this integration to lead to

productive use and application of information for the

purposes of teacher training (pre and in-service), teacher

evaluation, and school design. Continuation of the rela-

tive isolation of teacher education from this emergent

knowledge base will constrain both the advancement and

application of that knowledge. In particular, we believe

that a focused effort to study the development and train-

ing of teachers from a relational perspective (Goodlad,

1991) is imperative to improving teacher and child out-

comes.

In sum, this chapter marks the emergence and consolida-

tion of a relatively new area of inquiry and understanding:

relationships between teachers and children. The insights and

improvements gained from the last decade of research in this

area bode well for the future. 

REFERENCES

Adelman, H. S. (1996). Restructuring education support services

and integrating community resources: Beyond the full service

school model. School Psychology Review, 25, 431–445.

Ainsworth, M. D., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, D. (1978).

Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange

situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student moti-

vation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 261–271.

References

229

Bakeman, R., & Gottman, J. M. (1986). Observing interaction: An

introduction to sequential analysis. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge

University Press.

Baker, J. A. (1999). Teacher-student interaction in urban at-risk

classrooms: Differential behavior, relationship quality, and

student satisfaction with school. The Elementary School Jour-

nal, 100, 57–70.

Baker, J., Terry, T., Bridger, R., & Winsor, A. (1997). Schools as

caring communities: A relational approach to school reform.

School Psychology Review, 26(4), 586–602.

Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New

York: W. H. Freeman.

Barker, R. G. (1968). Ecological psychology: Concepts and meth-

ods for studying the environment of human behavior. Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.

Barkley, R. (1987). Defiant children: A clinician’s manual for parent

training. New York: Guilford.

Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1997).

Caring school communities. Educational Psychologist, 32(3),

137–151.

Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Watson, M., Solomon, J., & Schaps, E.

(1989). Effects of an elementary school program to enhance pro-

social behavior on children’s cognitive-social problem-solving

skills and strategies. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychol-

ogy, 10, 147–169.

Battistich, V., Watson, M., Solomon, D., Lewis, C., & Schaps, E.

(1999). Beyond the three R’s: A broader agenda for school

reform. The Elementary School Journal, 99(5), 415–429.

Beady, C. H., & Hansell, S. (1981). Teacher race and expectations

for student achievement. American Educational Research

Journal, 18(2), 191–206.

Belsky, J., & MacKinnon, C. (1994). Transition to school: Develop-

mental trajectories and school experiences. Early Education and

Development, 5, 106–119.

Birch, S., & Ladd, G. W. (1996). Interpersonal relationships in the

school environment and children’s early school adjustment. In

K. Wentzel & J. Juvonen (Eds.), Social motivation: Understand-

ing children’s school adjustment (pp. 199–225). Cambridge,

MA: Cambridge University Press.

Birch, S. H., & Ladd, G. W. (1997). The teacher-child relationship

and children’s early school adjustment. Journal of School

Psychology, 35, 61–79.

Birch, S. H., & Ladd, G. W. (1998). Children’s interpersonal behav-

iors and the teacher-child relationship. Developmental Psychol-

ogy, 34, 934–946.

Bornstein, M. H. (1995). Handbook of Parenting. Mahwah, NJ:

Erlbaum.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New

York: Basic Books.

Bracken, B. A., & Craine, R. M. (1994). Children’s and adolescents’

interpersonal relations: Do age, race, and gender define nor-

malcy? Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 12, 14 –32.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (1998). The ecology of devel-

opmental processes. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Hand-

book of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human

development (5th ed., pp. 993–1028). New York: Wiley.

Brophy, J. (1985). Teachers’ expectations, motives, and goals for

working with problem students. In C. Ames & R. Ames (Eds.),

Research on motivation in education: Vol. 2. The classroom

milieu (pp. 175–213). New York: Academic Press.

Brophy, J., & Good, J. L. (1974). Teacher-student relationships.

New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Brophy, J., & Good, J. L. (1986). Teacher behavior and student

achievement. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on

teaching (pp. 328–375). New York: Macmillan.

Cairns, R. B., & Cairns, B. D. (1994). Lifelines and risks. Pathways

of youth in our time. Hempstead, NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Calderhead, J. (1996). Teachers, beliefs, and knowledge. In D. C.

Berliner & R. C. Calfee (Eds.), Handbook of educational

psychology (pp. 709–725). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Calderhead, J., & Robson, M. (1991). Images of teaching: Student

teachers’ early conceptions of classroom practice. Teaching and

Teacher Education, 7, 1–8.

Campbell, S. B. (1990). Behavior problems in preschool children.

New York: Guilford.

Campbell, S. B. (1994). Hard-to-manage preschool boys: Externaliz-

ing behavior, social competence, and family context at two-year

follow-up. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 22, 147–166.

Case, K. I. (1997). African-American othermothering in the urban

elementary school. The Urban Review, 29, 25–39.

Cauce, A. M., Comer, J. P., & Schwartz, D. (1987). Long term effects

of a systems oriented school prevention program. American

Journal of Orthopsychiatric Association, 57, 127–131.

Cicchetti, D., & Cohen, D. J. (1995). Developmental psychopathol-

ogy. New York: Wiley.

Cohn, D. A. (1990). Child-mother attachment of six-year-olds and

social competence at school. Child Development, 61, 152–162.

Cohn, J., Campbell, S., Matias, R., & Hopkins, J. (1990). Face-to-

face interactions of pastpartum depressed and non-depressed

mother-infant pairs. Developmental Psychology, 26, 15–23.

Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (1999). Initial

impact of the fast track prevention trial for conduct problems: II.

Classroom effects. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychol-

ogy, 67(5), 648–657.

Connell, J. P., & Wellborn, J. G. (1991). Competence, autonomy, and

relatedness: A motivational analysis of self-system processes. In

R. Gunnar & L. A. Sroufe (Eds.), Minnesota symposia on child

psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 43–77). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team. (1995). Cost, quality

and child outcomes in child care centers: Public report. Denver:

University of Colorado at Denver, Economics Department.

Cowen, E. (1997). On the semantics and operations of primary

prevention and wellness enhancement. American Journal of

Community Psychology, 25(3), 245–256.