Turkish Children’s Self-Regulation and Learning Behaviors in the Context of Teacher-Child Relationships

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

Abstract

Children’s approach to learning is essential for both academic achievement and socio-emotional well-being. This competence is influenced by both individual (self-regulation) and environmental factors (teacher-child relationships). Children’s relationships with their teachers provide a supportive or inhibitive context for children’s individual outcomes, such as self-regulation and learning outcomes (Burchinal et al., 2002; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Rudasill et al., 2010). Although the teacher-child relationship has been found to be related to children’s academic and socioemotional outcomes, the link between the qualities of teacher-child relationships and children’s outcomes has yet been unrevealed. The purpose of the current study was to examine Turkish children’s learning behaviors and self-regulation in the context of teacher-child relationships, with a particular interest in examining the interplay of children’s self-regulation and teacher-child relationship predicting children’s learning behaviors. Participants were 140 preschool children (81 boys) from a disadvantaged neighborhood in Istanbul, Turkey. Children’s age ranged from 39 to 77 months (M = 62.55, SD = 8.53). Teachers reported on teacher–child relationship quality using the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001) and children’s learning
Behaviors using the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS; McDermott et al., 2002; McDermott et al., 2000. We assessed children’s self-regulation via structured performance-based tasks from the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA; Smith Donald et al., 2007) and the gift wrap task from Carlson (2005). All measures have been validated with Turkish teachers and children (Acar et al., 2018; Veziroğlu Celik et al., 2018). SAS PROC MIXED was used to account for the nesting structure of the data in the analysis. Results showed: first, teacher-child conflict was negatively related to cool-self-regulation (-.24). Second, the combination of high teacher-child closeness and hot self-regulation was related to higher levels of learning behaviors. Third, teacher closeness was positively, and teacher conflict was negatively associated with children’s learning behaviors. Fourth, cool and hot aspects of self-regulation were related to children’s learning behaviors; this was true only for cool aspects of self-regulation in multivariate analyses. Children’s self-regulation (hot and cool aspects) and the qualities of teacher-child relationships appear to be important for their approaches to learning. Findings from the current study provide additional support for individual-context interaction for child outcomes in the Turkish preschool educational context.

Authors

• Ibrahim Hakki Acar, Özyeğin University
  Presenting Author

• Mefharet Veziroglu Celik, Istanbul Medipol University

• Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Martinique Sealy, Virginia Commonwealth University