Children's interpersonal behaviors and the teacher-child relationship.
Relations between kindergartners' (N = 199; M age = 5 years 6 months) behavioral orientations and features of their 1st-grade teacher-child relationships (i.e., conflict, closeness, dependency) were examined longitudinally. Early behavioral orientations predicted teacher-child relationship quality in that (a) unique associations emerged between children's early antisocial behavior and features of their 1st-grade teacher-child relationships (i.e., negative relation with closeness, positive relation with conflict and dependency) and between asocial behavior and teacher-child dependency, and (b) prosocial behavior was correlated with but not uniquely related to any feature of children's 1st-grade teacher-child relationships. In addition, specific features of the teacher-child relationship (e.g., conflict) predicted changes in children's behavioral adjustment (e.g., decreasing prosocial behavior).
Birch
S H
SH
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign 61820, USA.
Ladd
G W
GW
D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010553:Personality Development; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012919:Social Behavior; D012963:Sociometric Techniques; D013663:Teaching