Early Teacher–Child Relationships Promote Self-Regulation Development in Prekindergarten

• In Event: Children’s Self-Regulation in the Context of Teacher-Child Relationships in Colombia, Turkey, and the United States

Abstract

Children’s experiences during preschool are critical for shaping their emerging self-regulation skills. children’s prekindergarten experiences vary widely (Shapiro, 2021) and research suggests that children with high-quality relationships with their prekindergarten teachers may be better prepared academically and socially for formal schooling than children with poorer quality relationships (Chiu and Chi, 2014; Pianta, 1999; Rau et al., 2015; Rimm-Kaufman and Pianta, 2000). Overall, children’s experiences during the prekindergarten period are critical for shaping their emerging self-regulation skills. The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of teacher-child relationship quality to children’s performance on a self-regulation task at the end of prekindergarten. We recruited 104 children (56 females, 48 males) from a small Midwestern city in the United States. Children were enrolled in 23 classrooms (22 female teachers, 1 male teacher; all White) from 9 preschools representing state-supported, private, and religiously affiliated programs. Teachers rated the conflict, closeness, and dependency in their relationships with children in the fall of prekindergarten using the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001), and children’s self-regulation was independently measured with a visual attention task in the spring of prekindergarten using the visual attention subtest of the NEPSY (Korkman et al., 1998). In addition, teachers and parents rated children’s temperamental self-regulation (i.e., effortful control). Regression analysis accounted for the nesting structure of the data was run. Results indicate that greater teacher-child dependency predicted children’s longer time on the visual attention task, and greater teacher-child closeness predicted children’s lower accuracy on the visual attention task. In addition, children who were rated as more self-regulated by parents were more accurate on the visual attention task. This study of prekindergarten self-regulation development adds to the extant literature by revealing several points. First, in the early education years, dependency in the teacher-child relationship may be problematic for children’s self-regulation development. Second, closeness in this relationship may also be problematic for children’s self-regulation. Although closeness has been widely found to be positive for children’s school-related outcomes, our findings indicate that there may be some additional factors at play in understanding the linkages between teacher-child closeness and the development of self-regulation. Prekindergarten teacher-child relationships are potential points of intervention for promoting positive self-regulation development, as well as possible bellwethers of self-regulation difficulties.

Authors

• Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author

• Ibrahim Hakki Acar, Özyeğin University

• Yaoying Xu, Virginia Commonwealth University