Children’s close and conflictual relationships with their teachers have profound impacts on their school success and social and emotional outcomes. The field has focused on teacher influences on student outcomes, with few studies addressing the role of the child. Children’s negative emotionality has been linked to numerous behavioral outcomes, highlighting emotionality as a crucial aspect for successful adjustment. Our goal was to examine how early childhood negative emotion expression impacted later teacher-child relationships, and if a part of this association was explained by birth parent (BP) temperament (heritable influences).
Using data from the Early Growth and Development Study (N = 561), we examined heritable (BP temperament) influences on children’s sadness and anger at 4.5 years and how heritable influences may evoke close or conflictual relationships with teachers at child age 7 years via children’s negative emotion expression. To capture the possible heritable influences of BPs, we used factor analyses to develop latent temperament factors for BPs. We factor analyzed BP self-report on the Adult Temperament Questionnaire, Temperament Character Inventory, and the Harter Adult Self-Perception Scale in early childhood. Four factors were extracted: negative affect vs. self-control, agreeableness vs. disagreeableness, high vs low orienting sensitivity, and high vs. low behavioral activation. Teacher-child relationships were assessed with teacher-report of the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale at child age 7 years. Child sadness and anger was assessed using parent-report on the Child Behavior Questionnaire at child age 4.5 years. Child behavior problems was assessed using parent-report on the Child Behavior Checklist at age 11 years.
We examined child sadness and anger at age 4.5 years predicting teachers’ report of their close and conflictual relationships at age 7 and parent report of child behavior problems at age 11. The model fit was acceptable (χ2 (25) = 42.44, RMSEA = .04, CFI = .95, SRMR = .03). Results indicated that high child sadness was associated with a closer but not conflictual teacher-child relationship (β = .17, p < .05) and more internalizing behavior problems (β = .22, p < .01). Child anger was not associated with teacher-child closeness or conflict but was associated with internalizing (β = .21, p < .01) and externalizing problem behavior (β = .31, p < .01). Conflictual teacher-child relationships was positively associated with children’s externalizing problems (β = .16, p < .05). Higher BP control was associated with more child sadness (β = .12, p < .05) and internalizing behavior problems (β = -.12, p < .05). Higher BP behavioral activation was associated with more child sadness (β = .08, p < .05) and anger (β = .09, p < .01). However, the indirect effects of BP temperament to child sadness to teacher-child closeness to internalizing problem behavior was not significant.
These findings suggest that children’s negative emotion expression can elicit specific teacher-child relationships. However, it is unclear if the child evocative effect on teachers is influenced by these heritable influences on child anger and sadness. The current study helps us better understand how and by what mechanisms children affect their learning.
Personality, Temperament, Attitudes, Politics and Religion , other
Shewark_Teacher_BGA_Abstract_2018_Updated.pdf 