ECED 2365 Final Practicum: Powerful Interactions

Interactions are the daily exchanges in words and gestures one has with others. As a teacher, the interactions he/she has with young children can make a positive difference in their lives. A teacher's powerful interactions with children play an important role in their emotional well-being and learning. Powerful interactions are not the same as everyday interactions. The authors define powerful interactions as those in which teachers intentionally connect with the child while at the same time saying or doing something to guide the child's learning a small step forward. Powerful interactions begin long before teachers first meet or talk with a child. They begin with the way teachers think and their attitude about their work and the children they teach. Teachers' attitude matters. Teaching is more than following a curriculum successfully. It is an ongoing process of inquiry that requires curiosity and the ability to ask questions and look for answers. In this article, the authors describe some techniques that teachers can apply to keep their spirit of inquiry alive and make their interactions powerful.

There will always be stresses and distractions while caring for young children, so building skills that promote greater attention, focus, and calm offer children the benefit of a peaceful, responsive presence in their early childhood setting. Here is another area where mindfulness can help: building our capacity to be fully aware in the moment allows us to become more attuned detectives in discovering what an infant or toddler is revealing to us.

Prosocial behavior is considered an important dimension of positive development. Although previous research suggests the quality of children's early relationships may influence prosocial behaviors, the specific contributions of mother, father and teacher to children's prosocial behavior have been less examined. This is a cross-sectional study that investigates (a) the combined associations between mother-, father- and teacher-child relationships, and prosocial behavior in 168 children aged 36-72 months, and (b) the mediating role of the teacher-child relationship in the association between the parent-child relationship and prosocial behavior. Results suggested a positive link between the quality of relationships with early caregivers and children's prosocial behavior. The quality of both father- and teacher-child relationships were found to have a direct association with children's prosocial behavior. The quality of the mother-child relationship was indirectly linked to children's prosocial behavior, via the teacher-child relationship. Results suggesting connections between multiple relational contexts were discussed based on the notion of internal working models proposed by attachment theory. Mothers' and fathers' contributions to children's prosocial behavior were also discussed considering differences on relational styles and changing roles of mothers and fathers from dual-earner families.

This study examined three competing models assessing the directional associations between the quality of children's relationships with teachers and friends (i.e., closeness and conflict) and their emotional and behavioral school engagement (i.e., the relationship-driven, engagement-driven, and transactional models). The additive contributions of relationship quality and school engagement to prospective academic skills and age-related differences in these associations were also assessed. Models were tested using autoregressive, cross-lagged path analyses. Participants were 461 low-income, ethnically diverse children from kindergarten to Grade 3, who were assessed three times in one school term. In support of the relationship-driven model, closeness with friends and conflict with teachers and friends predicted prospective emotional engagement. In support of the transactional model, friendship closeness and teacher-child and friendship conflict transacted with behavioral engagement over the school term. Higher emotional engagement and, unexpectedly, friendship conflict predicted higher prospective academic skills. Associations between relationship closeness and behavioral engagement were significant for older children only.

Background: 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). Objective: The aim of the present study is to examine Turkish children's learning behaviors through the interplay of children's self-regulation and teacher–child relationship. In particular, we examine the moderating role of teacher–child relationship quality on the link between self-regulation and learning behaviors. Method: 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 and children's learning behaviors. We assessed children's self-regulation via structured performance-based tasks. Results: Regression results using SAS PROC MIXED showed: first, the combination of high teacher–child closeness and hot self-regulation was related to higher levels of learning behaviors. Second, teacher closeness was positively, and teacher conflict was negatively associated with children's learning behaviors. Third, 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. Conclusions: 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.

Background: Children’s early classroom experiences, particularly their interpersonal interactions with teachers, have implications for their academic achievement and classroom behavior. Teacher–child relationships and classroom interactions are both important aspects of children’s early classroom experiences, but they are not typically considered together in studies of early childhood classrooms. The bioecological model suggests that both uniquely impact children’s development.Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the joint impact of individual teacher–child relationships reported by the teacher and observed classroom interactions to identify associations between these and children’s outcomes.Methods: Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth cohort, multiple regression was employed to test the hypothesis that teacher–child relationships and classroom interactions are uniquely related to children’s classroom behavior and academic achievement. Further, a moderation model was tested to examine the moderating impact of teacher–child relationships on the association between classroom interactions and children’s outcomes.Results: Teacher–child relationships were related to children’s concurrent academic achievement and classroom behavior, and to children’s classroom behavior assessed one year later. No main effects of classroom interactions were identified; however, teacher–child relationships moderated the associations between classroom interactions and children’s preschool classroom behavior.Conclusions: Findings suggest that teacher–child relationships are important for children’s development in classrooms, even after accounting for classroom interactions. Professional development for teachers and measurement in classroom research should address teacher–child relationships in addition to classroom interactions.

The present study involved 120 kindergartners, of whom n = 60 were followed up to first grade. Upon making inquiries regarding closeness in teacher–child relationships in the classrooms, the children participated in a laboratory situation in which they were exposed to computerized tasks. These tasks challenged the cognitive processes thought to govern basic knowledge and belief systems. Before each task commenced, however, the image of the child's teacher (affective prime stimulus), with whom the relationship had been measured, was displayed for an experimental group of children. In contrast to a control group being exposed to a neutral prime, it was assumed that the teachers' images displayed in the experimental group would affect cognitive performance in a defined way (i.e., if primed by a person schema of a close relationship, these children should perform better than the rest). Whereas solving scores remained unaffected, children displayed shorter solving times under affective primes when in close relationships with their teachers. This effect could even be evidenced after the transition to school. Results suggest that cognitive processing is much more effective if close teacher–child relationships are involved.

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,364) and 2-level hierarchical linear models with site fixed effects, we examined between- and within-child associations between teacher–child relationship closeness and conflict and standardized measures of children’s math and reading achievement from 1st through 5th grades. In addition, we tested whether longitudinal effects varied by gender. Results revealed a between-child effect of conflict and a within-child effect of closeness on reading achievement for the full sample. In addition, there were moderated between- and within-child effects of conflict on math achievement: Girls with more conflictual relationships showed lower overall levels of math achievement and less growth in math achievement than did boys with similar levels of conflict. Implications are discussed.