Children's perceptions of the classroom environment and social and academic performance: A longitudinal analysis of the contribution of the Responsive Classroom approach

Abstract

This study examines the contribution of the Responsive Classroom (RC) Approach, a set of teaching practices that integrate social and academic learning, to children's perceptions of their classroom, and children's academic and social performance over time. Three questions emerge: (a) What is the concurrent and cumulative relation between children's perceptions of the classroom and social and academic outcomes over time? (b) What is the contribution of teacher's use of RC practices to children's perceptions and social and academic outcomes? (c) Do children's perceptions of the classroom mediate the relation between RC teacher practices and child outcomes? Cross-lagged autoregressive structural equation models were used to analyze teacher and child-report questionnaire data, along with standardized test scores collected over 3 years from a sample of 520 children in grades 3–5. Results indicate a significant positive relation between RC teacher practices and child perceptions and outcomes over time. Further, children's perceptions partially mediated the relation between RC teacher practices and social competence. However, the models did not demonstrate that child perceptions mediated the relation between RC practices and achievement outcomes. Results are explained in terms of the contribution of teacher practices to children's perceptions and student performance.

Introduction

Educators are faced with the dual roles of optimizing student academic achievement and nurturing children's social development. These two goals of providing both academic and social support for children can be complementary in nature. A growing literature points to the importance of positive classroom social processes—children's positive interactions with teachers and peers—for improving children's social and academic performance (Baker et al., 1997, Flook et al., 2005, Hamre and Pianta, 2005).

Teachers play a pivotal role in creating opportunities for social-emotional and academic learning (Hawkins et al., 1988, Solomon et al., 1997). Teachers create external environments to facilitate children's learning. However, teachers' efforts are only part of the equation. Learning is a process that occurs inside the child. Children need to be receptive, feel motivated, and connected in order for a well-facilitated classroom environment to contribute to their learning. Children's bonding to school is one way to assess children's engagement in the learning process. The purpose of this study is to examine children's perceptions of their classroom environment because it offers a unique lens from which to view the association between classroom processes and learning outcomes.

This study examines the contribution of the Responsive Classroom® (RC) Approach, a set of teaching principles and practices designed to integrate social and academic learning. The focus of the present study was to analyze the relation between teacher practices, children's perceptions of their classroom environment, and social and academic performance over 3 years. A second goal was to analyze the role of children's perceptions of the classroom as a potential mediator between RC teacher practices and child outcomes. We hypothesized the RC Approach would improve children's social and academic performance, that the contribution of RC would be cumulative over time, and that changes in children's perceptions would be associated with changes in social and academic performance.

The premise of this study derives from a motivational theory of self-system processes developed by Connell and Wellborn (1991). According to this theory, children have three basic psychological needs (competence, autonomy, and relatedness) all of which can be met in a classroom through children's interactions with teachers and the learning environment.

Competence is defined by Connell and Wellborn (1991, p.51) as “the need to experience oneself as capable of desired outcomes”. Teachers can promote children's feelings of competence through constructive feedback that values the learning process (e.g. “I noticed that you put a lot of effort into working as a team”), rather than using generic praise or focusing on the product (e.g. “good job”).

Autonomy describes “the experience of choice in the initiation, maintenance, and regulation of activity and the experience of connectedness between one's actions and personal goals and values” (Connell & Wellborn, 1991, p.51). Teachers can facilitate an autonomous learning environment where children to can choose, initiate, and direct their own activities. In so doing, children can select which mode of learning will best suit their interests and hold their attention.

For Connell and Wellborn (1991), relatedness “encompasses the need to feel securely connected to the social surround and the need to experience oneself as worthy and capable of love and respect” (p. 52). Teachers who make an effort to learn about their students (e.g. family dynamics, cultural differences) can encourage school bonding. Teachers can promote relatedness by modeling prosocial interactions during organized group activities.

The motivational theory of self-system processes suggests fulfillment of these three key psychological needs motivates children's engagement, and engagement mediates the relation between children's perceptions and classroom performance. Specific teacher practices are associated with children's sense of competence (Eccles Parsons et al., 1982, Pintrich and Blumenfeld, 1985), autonomy (Reeve & Jang, 2006), relatedness (Solomon et al., 1997), and engagement (Kruif, McWilliam, Ridley, & Wakely, 2000), all thought by Connell and Wellborn (1991) to be key ingredients in fostering children's social and academic outcomes.

Research suggests fulfillment of children's psychological needs contributes to positive social and academic outcomes. Children's perceptions of competence were associated with academic achievement (Kurdek & Sinclair, 2000). Teacher practices that supported autonomy improved childrens' motivation and perceptions of academic competence (Ryan & Grolnick, 1986). Kindergartener's feelings of relatedness to teachers, operationalized by teachers' ratings of dependence and conflict with the child, were related to social and academic outcomes through eighth grade (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). Taken together, these findings suggest that children's feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness are associated with social and academic outcomes.

The self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) further suggests that experiencing competence, autonomy, and relatedness facilitate healthful socialization by nurturing children's development of self-regulation (e.g., the ability to persist at difficult tasks or wait for one's turn). Theoretically, children who have these three psychological needs met in the classroom become more internally regulated and thus exhibit more social competence. Emerging empirical evidence supports this assumption; for example, children's ability to self-regulate predicts teacher and parent report of children's social competence (Spinrad et al., 2006).

Teachers, through their quality of interactions with children and their choice of classroom practices, have the potential to create an environment that meets (or stifles) children's psychological needs, which may be reflected in children's social and academic outcomes. The RC Approach and other social and emotional learning interventions that are explicitly designed to address children's psychological needs can create an environment that fosters children's bonding to school and bolsters academic achievement.

School-wide social and emotional learning interventions that alter teacher practices have been implemented to better address children's emotional and instructional needs. The Child Development Project was an elementary school-wide social development intervention that improved children's social skills and performance on problem solving and cognitive tasks (Battistich, Solomon, Watson, & Schaps, 1997). The Seattle Social Development Project trained teachers in classroom management; children were exposed to the intervention from first through sixth grade. Findings at the end of sixth grade indicate children experienced increased bonding to school, improved achievement test scores, and exhibited more social skills, as compared to a control group (Abbot et al., 1998, Hawkins et al., 1992, O'Donnell, 1995). Further, children who received the intervention during elementary school experienced positive perceptions about learning and long-term school bonding at age 18 (Hawkins, Guo, Hill, Battin-Pearson, & Abbott, 2001). The Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum was designed to enhance elementary students' social competence (Greenberg & Kusche, 1998). Exposure to the PATHS curriculum fostered improved performance in specific academic tasks, including nonverbal reasoning and block design (Greenberg, Kusche, & Riggs, 2004). Two years after implementation, the PATHS curriculum slowed the rate of growth in teacher-report of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Kam, Greenberg, & Kusche, 2004). Taken together, findings from studies of school-wide interventions designed to alter the social-emotional environment of the classroom, suggest that children improve socially and academically. Evidence of their contributions is concurrent and longitudinal. The present study will examine both the effects of exposure to RC teacher practices within one school year and over the course of 3 years, thus furthering our understanding of concurrent and long-lasting effects of school-wide implementation.

Results from previous studies highlight the importance of examining the effectiveness of the RC Approach, especially given that RC teacher practices are already widespread with 60,000 teachers implementing the RC Approach in their classrooms (NEFC, 1997). The primary goal of the RC Approach is to create an emotional climate that supports learning through a set of RC principles and practices. RC principles include: (a) an equal emphasis on the social and academic curriculum; (b) a focus on how children learn as much as what they learn; (c) a view that social interaction facilitates cognitive growth; (d) an emphasis on teachers' knowledge of children's individual, cultural, and developmental characteristics; and (e) an emphasis on cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control as critical social skills for children to learn.

RC principles give rise to specific practices including (a) a daily ‘Morning Meeting’ to provide children with opportunity to practice pro-social skills; (b) collaboration between teachers and children to develop positively worded ‘Rules and Logical Consequences’; (c) classroom organization that fosters social interaction, independence, and maximization of learning; (d) guided discovery, a teaching format that encourages children to care for their learning environment; and (e) academic choice, a format of instruction that cultivates children's interests, thus fueling motivation and allowing for a sense of autonomy (NEFC, 1997, NEFC, 2003). RC principles and practices are designed to nurture children's feelings of competence, relatedness, and autonomy which Connell and Wellborn (1991) describe as the three basic psychological needs of children. The design of the RC Approach suggests educators can meet children's psychological needs in the classroom by adopting RC teacher practices.

RC principles and practices are designed to create a classroom that provides both emotional and instructional support which is different from a typical classroom setting. The RC Approach aims to alter daily routines, structure, climate, and organization of the classroom in a way that both increases teachers' self-efficacy, and children's pro-social behavior (Rimm-Kaufman and Chiu, in press, Rimm-Kaufman and Sawyer, 2004). Based on the nature of RC principles and practices and what is known about similar social and emotional learning interventions, we expect RC teacher practices will relate to children's perceptions of the classroom as well as enhance social and academic performance. If this is the case, the role of children's perceptions as a mediator between RC teacher practices and child outcomes may help explain how classroom processes affect performance.

The degree to which children's psychological needs are met in the classroom can be viewed in terms of the perceptions children have about their school experience. Teachers create a learning environment that either promotes or constrains competence, autonomy, and relatedness in each child. Children's perceptions of these experiences may be good indicators of the success with which teachers meet the needs of children.

Children's perceptions of their classrooms rely on positive teacher–student relationships. Children who perceive social support from teachers display an increase in motivation toward academic and pro-social goals; this increase in motivation is related to academic achievement (Wentzel, 1998, Wentzel and Wigfield, 1998). Teachers can improve children's perceptions by engaging students and promoting positive feelings about learning. This positive emotional climate contributes to students' motivation to learn (Stipek et al., 1998). Classroom interventions that address children's emotional needs can influence children's perceptions of their environment. Children's improved perceptions of their classroom have been shown to improve social and academic outcomes (Battistich et al., 2004, Blankmeyer et al., 2002, Murray and Greenberg, 2000).

Personal attributes, including gender and sociodemographic risk factors influence children's perceptions of the classroom. Girls generally perceive more closeness and less conflict with teachers in elementary school (Salmon, 1999). Where as children identified as at-risk for school failure tend to spend less time on task, perceive themselves more negatively, and perceive their teachers more negatively (Montague & Rinaldi, 2001). Given these findings, the present study will account for contributions of both gender and sociodemographic risk factors (operationalized as low family income, low maternal education, limited English proficiency, or single parent status) in the analyses.

The present study derives from a quasi-experimental three-year longitudinal project, the Social and Academic Learning Study (SALS) addressing the efficacy of the Responsive Classroom Approach. This paper extends that research by analyzing the relation between RC teacher practices, children's perceptions of the learning environment, and children's social and academic gains. This study bridges what is known about children's perceptions of school during middle childhood and the literature examining socio-emotional interventions in the classroom. The ultimate goal is to understand how RC teacher practices improve children's outcomes.

The RC Approach, like all other classroom interventions, can be expected to have an effect only if it is employed with integrity (Greenberg et al., 2003). Our aim is to investigate the association between teacher's use of RC practices and child outcomes. Thus, we measured teacher's use of RC practices as a continuous variable, allowing us to capture a range of treatment fidelity amongst teachers and to examine children's outcomes in the context of the integrity of RC teacher practices to which students were exposed over 3 years.

Three questions are examined. First, what is the relation between children's perceptions of the classroom and social and academic outcomes over a three year period? We hypothesize that children who positively perceive their environment will achieve greater gains in measures of social and academic performance and that these gains will become increasingly strong over time. Second, what is the contribution of the RC Approach to children's perceptions and social and academic outcomes? We hypothesize that children exposed to RC teacher practices will perceive their classroom environment more positively and that these associations will be most pronounced within a single year. Third, do children's perceptions of the classroom mediate the relation between RC teacher practices and child outcomes? We expect children exposed to RC teacher practices should have better social and academic outcomes, and that analyses will point to children's perceptions of their classroom environment as a mediator.