School Psychology Review,2004, Volume 33, No. 3, pp. 444-458

Teacher-Child Relationships and Children's Success inthe First Years of School

Robert C. Pianta and Megan W. StuhlmanUniversity of Virginia

Abstract. This work examines associations between closeness and conflict inteacher-child relationships and children's social and academic skills in first gradein a sample of 490 children. Assessments of teacher-child relationships were ob-tained in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Results demonstrate moderatecorrelations among teachers' ratings of conflict and slightly lower correlationsamong teachers' ratings of closeness across years. Hierarchical regression analy-ses predicted children's skills in first grade from teacher-child relationship quality.Child gender, socioeconomic status, and preschool estimates of outcomes of inter-est were controlled statistically. Although preschool assessments of social and aca-demic skills were closely associated with individual skill differences at first grade,teacher-child relationship quality also was associated with changes in skill levels.Findings generally confirm that teacher-child relationships play a role in children'sability to acquire the skills necessary for success in school.

Concerns about children lacking the tion (Entwisle& Alexander, 1999; Ladd, Birch,skills necessary for success in early elemen- & Buhs, 1999; Ladd & Burgess, 1999). Bothtary school classrooms have moved to the fore of these competencies show great variation inin recent years, as the number of children en- national studies (NCES, 1999). The presentcountering difficulties in this setting has in- study focuses on the extent to which the qual-creased (National Education Goals Panel, ity of children's relationships with three dif-1997). Several major research initiatives have ferent early school teachers represents a uniqueexplored how to facilitate school success; many source of variation in their early school adjust-have concluded that key components include ment, and predicts their social and academicthe development of strong pre-academic, so- functioning at first grade,cial, and behavioral skills early in children's The quality of children's relationshipsschool careers (Lyon, 2002; NICHD ECCRN, with their early school teachers is increasingly2002a; National Center for Educational Sta- recognized as a contributor to school adapta-tistics [NCES], 1999; Ramey, Ramey, & tion (Birch & Ladd, 1997, 1998; Howes,Phillips, 1996). Emerging from this research Hamilton, & Matheson, 1994; Howes &is the impression that early and subsequent Matheson, 1992; Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins,school functioning hinges on two related sets 1995). Similar to parent-child relationships,of competencies: those pertaining to early lit- teacher-child relationships appear to serve aeracy and language development and those regulatory function with regard to children'sassociated with relationships and self-regula- social and emotional development (Greenberg,

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert C. Pianta, PhD, NICHD Study ofEarly Child Care, University of Virginia, 853 W. Main St., Ste. 100, Republic Plaza Annex, Charlottesville,VA 22903; E-mail: rcp4p@virginia.edu

Copyright 2004 by the National Association of School Psychologists, ISSN 0279-6015

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Speltz, & Deklyen, 1993; Pianta, 1999) andtherefore have the potential to exert a positiveor negative influence on children's ability tosucceed in school. In fact, the development ofchildren's early competencies in several do-mains has been linked to (and is perhaps fa-cilitated by) the quality of the teacher-childrelationship. Specifically, kindergarten chil-dren who have highly negative relationshipswith their teachers have been found to demon-strate higher levels of behavior problems andlower levels of behavioral competencies 2years later as compared to their peers who havehighly positive relationships with kindergar-ten teachers (Pianta et al., 1995). The qualityof teacher-child relationships also has predictedchanges in children's behavioral orientationacross kindergarten through first grade: Con-flict with the kindergarten teacher predicteddeclining prosocial behavior and sUghtly in-creasing aggressive behavior with peers (Birch& Ladd, 1998). "Secure" and "improved"teacher-child relationships in kindergarten areassociated with competent behavior in thatclassroom and fewer problems in first gradeclassrooms, and dependent teacher-child rela-tionships are associated with children's lackof competence (Pianta & Nimetz, 1991). Ex-tant studies also have found that children withchronic conflict in relationships with teachersin kindergarten and first grade demonstrate lesscooperative participation in school and lowerlevels of school liking as compared to childrenwith high levels of teacher-child closeness(Ladd & Burgess, 2001).

Given the associations between teacher-child relationships and children's school lik-ing and behavioral adjustment, it is not sur-prising that children who have more conflictin relationships with teachers also are less en-gaged in the classroom (Ladd, Birch, & Buhs,1999) and are at increased risk for poor aca-demic achievement (Ladd & Burgess, 2001).Conversely, close and supportive relationshipswith teachers have demonstrated the potentialto mitigate the risk of negative outcomes forstudents who might otherwise have difficultysucceeding in school (Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Pianta, & Howes, 2002; Lynch &Cicchetti, 1992; Pianta et al., 1995). For ex-

ample, Burchinal and colleagues found thatteacher-reported closeness with students waspositively related to growth in children's re-ceptive vocabulary and reading abilities frompreschool to second grade, specifically for chil-dren of color and children whose parents re-ported more authoritarian attitudes, respec-tively.

One potential criticism of examiningteacher-child relationships is that teachers'perceptions of the relationships they share withchildren is often synonymous with their per-ception of children's behavioral orientation.However, kindergarten teachers' perceptionsof their relationships with children have beenlinked to those students' subsequent academicand social functioning independent of the kin-dergarten teachers' reports of overall adjust-ment and uniquely predict both academic andbehavioral skills in students through eighthgrade (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). Negativity de-scribed by teachers in their relationships withchildren, particularly boys and children whohad early behavior problems, was an especiallyrobust predictor of those children's long-termadjustment to school (Hamre & Pianta, 2001).These results signify the salience of relationalprocesses in the early school years, and high-light the fact that indicators of teacher-childrelationships may better forecast subsequentadaptation in the classroom setting than moregeneral indicators of social competence or be-havior problems (Hamre & Pianta, 2001).

An additional area of interest that has yetto be thoroughly studied concerns the stabilityof the teacher-child relationship across years,and how timing influences the association be-tween this relationship and child outcomes.Extant studies have found that teachers' per-ceptions of conflict in their relationship with agiven student is marked by moderate consis-tency across the preschool to kindergarten tran-sition (Howes, Phillipsen, & Peisner-Feinberg,1999) as well as across kindergarten throughsecond grade (Pianta et al., 1995). In contrast,teachers' ratings of relational closeness appearmore variable across 3 years in early elemen-tary school (Pianta et al., 1995). Furthermore,despite moderate continuity across teachers'ratings of confiict in their relationship with a

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School Psychology Review, 2004, Volume 33, No. 3

given child, associations between relationshipquality and children's outcomes may changeover time. Evidence indicating that earlier re-lationships are more closely associated withchildren's language and social developmenthas accumulated in recent years. For example,Burchinal et al. (2002) found that the associa-tion between teacher-child closeness andchildren's development is stronger when chil-dren are in preschool than when they are inearly elementary school. Teacher-child close-ness was significantly associated with concur-rent receptive vocabulary scores among pre-school-aged children (e.g., 51 months and 61months of age), but not among kindergartenthrough second grade students.

Thus, past research has built a crediblecase for the salience of interpersonal processes,particularly the teacher-child relationship, inchildren's early school experiences. Teacher-child relationships appear to be both contribu-tors to and indicators of children's school ad-justment. The present study expands previouswork by examining the extent to which pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade teachers'perceptions of their relationship with students(in terms of both confiict and closeness) areassociated with those students' social and be-havioral outcomes. Because demographic vari-ables have been associated with both teacher-child relationship quality and child outcomes(i.e., Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999), these asso-ciations are adjusted for child gender and so-cioeconomic status. Furthermore, to evaluatethe unique associations between teacher-childrelationship quality and children's social andacademic skill development above and beyondthe skills that children have already acquiredprior to school entry, analyses also are adjustedfor preschool social and academic skills. Fi-nally, this study incorporates ratings ofchildren's skills from multiple sources. Bothteachers' and mothers' reports of children'sbehavior problems are used to determine theassociation between teacher-child relationshipsand behavior problems both in and out of theschool setting. In addition, children's academicskills were tested and their social skills in theclassroom were observed and rated by neutralobservers. The stability of repeated assess-

ments of student-teacher relationships frompreschool through first grade also was descrip-tively assessed in terms of both overall meanlevels of conflict and closeness reported andcorrelations between different teachers' ratingsof relationships with a given child.

Method

Participants

The 490 children and their families andteachers who were participants in the presentstudy were a small subset of the National In-stitute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment's Study of Early Child Care.Children and their parents and teachers wereobserved in preschool, kindergarten, and firstgrade, and parents and teachers reported onchildren's social and academic development atthese times. Furthermore, children's academicskill/cognitive development was tested bytrained data collectors in preschool and firstgrade. Mothers of the study children had anaverage of 14.81 years of education (SD =2.40), and 16% of the famihes were below thepoverty threshold when the children were 1month old. Fifty-one percent of the childrenwere male and 14% were nonwhite. Teachersof these children had, on average, 14.66 (SD =9.5 years) years of teaching experience andranged from first year teachers to those with40 years of experience. Ninety-five percent ofteachers were Caucasian, 2.2% were AfricanAmerican, 1.1% were Asian, and the remain-der classified themselves as "other." Ninety-six percent were female. The preschool con-texts were predominantly child care centers(74%), but children in other care settings wereincluded as well (19% were in home-based carefacilities and 7% were cared for by anonmatemal relative).

The children who were participants inthe present study were all those with full setsof the data under consideration (i.e., motherand teacher reports at preschool, kindergarten,and first grade; observations in preschool andfirst grade classrooms; academic test results atall assessment occasions; and parent reportedincome). Thus, only about one-third of the en-tire NICHD-SECC sample was used as a re-

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Teacher-Child Relationships and Children's Success

suit of the majority of participants having atleast 1 missing data point at any of the timeperiods utilized for analyses. To determinewhether the current analytic subsample wascomparable to the sample of all 1,364 partici-pants, the two groups were evaluated forequivalence on all covariate, prpdictor, andoutcomes variables utilized in the presentstudy. Out of these 23 comparisons, only fourstatistically significant differences were found:The present subsample had a slightly higherlevel of maternal education (average of 14.23years for the whole sample vs. 14.81 years inthis sample; t = 5.36, p

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