Toward a further understanding of teachers' reports of early teacher-child relationships: examining the roles of behavior appraisals and attributions

This study examined teachers’ reports of early teacher-child relationships by focusing on their assessments of the severity and the causes of children's social behaviors. Eighty-one kindergarten teachers filled out questionnaires about socially inhibited, hyperactive, and average children (n = 237) selected from their own classes. Multilevel analyses indicated that teachers reported less close and more dependent relationships for the inhibited and hyperactive versus the average children, and more conflictual relationships for the hyperactive versus the average children. These differences were largely mediated by teachers’ perceptions of children's personal behavior problems. In addition, we found that the teachers’ control attributions for children's social behaviors increased the link between children's perceived (personal and social) problems and relationship closeness. Results further support the idea that teachers’ relationship reports are personal, evaluative accounts rather than objective measures of teacher-child interactions.