Elsevier

Journal of School Psychology

Volume 39, Issue 4, July–August 2001, Pages 289-301
Journal of School Psychology

General article
Further Support for the Developmental Significance of the Quality of the Teacher–Student Relationship

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4405(01)00074-7Get rights and content

Abstract

Sociometric nominations and ratings assessed peers' perceptions of supportive and conflicted teacher–student relationships, evaluations of children's positive and negative attributes, and peer-rated liking. Participants were 993 third- and fourth-grade children. Girls obtained higher Teacher Support and lower Teacher Conflict scores compared with boys. The pattern of correlations between teacher–student relationship scores and other peer evaluations was comparable across genders. Both Teacher Support and Teacher Conflict made independent contributions to peer evaluations of children's competencies and acceptance of children. Teacher Support contributes to the prediction of social preference scores beyond that predicted by peer nominations of aggression. Teacher ratings of aggression were available for a subsample of 71 behaviorally at-risk children. For this subsample, Teacher Support predicted social preference scores after controlling for both peer nominations of aggression and teacher ratings of aggression. Peers' perceptions of Teacher Support may function as an “affective bias,” influencing both perceptions of child competencies and liking for the child. Implications of these findings for classroom-based interventions with peer-rejected children are discussed.

Section snippets

Community sample

The sample consisted of 993 children (497 males and 496 females) in third- and fourth-grade classrooms across 11 schools in an ethnically diverse school district. Written parental consent was obtained for approximately 80% of children in participating classrooms. Although ethnicity data were not available for individual participants, the ethnic composition of the participating classrooms was 24% African American, 31% Hispanic, and 44% white.

Behaviorally at-risk subsample

These 71 children (44 boys) had a mean age of 9.84

Preliminary Analyses

All peer data were standardized within classrooms. Preliminary analyses revealed no univariate outliers. Skewness ranged from 0.42 to 1.15, and kurtosis ranged from 0.01 to 0.57. The relative multivariate kurtosis index was 1.09. Thus, univariate and multivariate normality was judged sufficient to meet the assumptions for the analytic methods employed.

Discussion

This study is the first published study to report on the correlates of peers' perceptions of teacher–student relationship quality. Teacher Conflict scores were highly correlated with child aggression scores, suggesting that children select the same children when they are asked to nominate children who “don't get along with their teachers, often argue with their teachers, and do things that their teachers do not like” as they do when asked to nominate children who “call others names, start

Acknowledgements

Support for this research was provided by a grant to Jan Hughes and Timothy Cavell by the National Institute of Drug and Alcohol Abuse (R01-DA10037). Additional support was provided by a grant to Jan Hughes and Timothy Cavell from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.

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