The Fourth R: Relationships

• In Event: 35.053 - Understanding the Social Emotional Classroom Climate of Socioculturally and Neurodiverse Children in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

1. Objective
This study examines the quality preschoolers’ representations of their relationships with teachers and friends and how these representations are related to their social competence

2. Perspective/theoretical framework
How do children conceptualize the different relationships in their lives? The construct of internal representations provides one possible explanation, allowing a child to demonstrate developmental changes yet simultaneously remain organized. Used in attachment theory to explain how children organize their behavioral system at the representational level (Bowlby, 1969/1982), this concept can be used also to explore how children think about their teachers and friends. These representations can be assessed through the use of story stem tasks which allow the child to access his/her representational world (Oppenheim, 2003). While internal working models of attachment and of friendship have been acknowledged to exist (Baldwin, 1992; Bowlby, 1969/1982), no extant study has simultaneously examined children’s representations of relationships with teachers and friends. By tapping into children’s internal representations of these relationships, we can begin to understand how children make sense of them and whether these perceptions translate into real-world behaviors and how children are perceived by others.

3. Methods
Children’s representations of teachers and friends were assessed using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (Bretherton et al., 1990) and the Preschool Friendship Story Completion Task (San Juan, 2006), respectively. Narratives resulting from the tasks were then coded in order to assess the quality of the portrayed relationship, using the Attachment Story Completion Task Q-Sort (Miljkovitch, Pierrehumbert, Bretherton, & Halfon, 2004) for child-teacher narratives and the Dyadic Relationships Q-Set (Park & Waters, 1989) for child-friend narratives. Children’s teachers completed the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation: The Short Form (LaFrièniere & Dumas, 1996), which assesses children’s social competence and internalizing/externalizing behaviors.

4. Data sources
Thirty children (18 female, 12 male) from a large urban area in the Western United States participated. Mean age of the children was 57 months (SD=6.23). Approximately half (56%) of the children were Caucasian and 33% identified as being of mixed ethnicity. Children on average had spent 11 months (SD=8.33) in their current preschool classroom.

5. Results
Children generally narrated positive stories about their teachers while stories about friends had a mix of positive and negative elements. Negative portrayals of relationships with teachers was associated with teacher-rated internalizing behaviors (r(30)=.52, p=.003) while positive social orientation in stories with friends was associated with externalizing behaviors (r(30)=.41, p=.03).

6. Scientific/scholarly significance
Extant research has found similar associations (Laible, et al., 2004; von Klitzing, et al., 2007) between representations of children’s relationships and adult ratings of social competence, suggesting that children’s internal working models can influence/are influenced by their real-world encounters, as the dynamic nature of these mental structures not only shape but are also shaped by interactions with different people. By examining different viewpoints, a more comprehensive look at what children think of their relationships with other people and how other people view them can be gained. These findings further highlight the notion of the interactive role that these relationships play in a child’s socio-emotional development.

Author

• Jennifer A. Vu, University of Delaware