Teacher Influences 1

Chen, J., Jiang, H., Justice, L. M., Lin, T.-J., Purtell, K. M., Ansari, A. (2020). Influences of

teacher-child relationships and classroom social management on child-perceived peer social

experiences during early school years. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2746.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.586991

Influences of Teacher-Child Relationships and Classroom Social Management on Child-

Perceived Peer Social Experiences during Early School Years

Jing Chen

Hui Jiang

Laura M. Justice

Tzu-Jung Lin

Kelly M. Purtell

Arya Ansari

The Ohio State University Acknowledgement The research reported here was supported by the Institute for Education Sciences, through Grant R305N160024 awarded to The Ohio State University (Justice). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or National Center for Education Research. We would like to thank the research team, staff, and families without whom this research would not have been possible.

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Abstract

Interactions with teachers and peers are critical for children’s social, behavioral, and academic

development in the classroom context. However, these two types of interpersonal interactions in

the classroom are usually pursued via separate lines of inquiries. The current study bridges these

two areas of research to examine the way in which teachers influence child-perceived peer social

support and peer victimization for 2,678 children within 183 classrooms in preschool through

grade three. Two levels of teacher influence are considered, namely teacher-child closeness and

conflict relationships at the child-level, and teacher management of interpersonal interactions at

the classroom-level. Results of multilevel regression models showed that teacher-child closeness

was associated with the growth of child-perceived peer social support from fall to spring,

whereas teacher-child conflict and teachers’ behavior management practices were associated

with the change in child-perceived peer victimization across the academic year. These

associations were unique and above and beyond the influence of children’s actual peer social

interactions, including reciprocal friendships and the collective classroom reputation of peer

victimization. Collectively, findings highlight the multi-faceted teacher roles in shaping

children’s perceptions of their peer social experiences during the earliest years of schooling.

Keywords: Child-perception of peer social experiences; peer social support; peer victimization;

teacher-child relationships; classroom social management

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Influences of Teacher-Child Relationships and Classroom Social Management on Child-

Perceived Peer Social Experiences during Early School Years

Children’s interactions with their teachers and peers are both salient features of the

classroom environment and figure prominently in theories concerning children’s development

and learning (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Studies find that positive interactions with

teachers and with peers and the way in which teachers manage interpersonal interactions in the

classroom influence children’s concurrent and long-term social, emotional, and academic

development (e.g., Hosan & Hoglund, 2017; Jerome et al., 2009; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996;

Ladd et al., 2017). However, much of the extant literature has considered the influence of

teachers and peers separately (Hughes & Im, 2016; Wang et al., 2016). Consequently, we know

little about the roles of teachers in optimizing children’s perceptions of their peer social

experiences and whether teacher influences are above and beyond children’s actual peer social

interactions. This an important gap in knowledge because researchers have argued that children’s

perceptions of their peer social experiences might be more predictive of their social and

psychological well-being and school success than their actual peer interactions (Betts et al.,

2013; Önder et al., 2019; Troop-Gordon et al., 2019). Thus, the current study examines multiple

levels of teacher influences, including teacher-child relationships (i.e., closeness and conflict) at

the child-level and teachers’ classroom management of interpersonal interactions at the

classroom-level, on two aspects of peer social experiences from children’s perspective: peer

social support and peer victimization.

Significance of Child-Perceived Peer Social Experiences

Peer social support and peer victimization are two important aspects of children’s

classroom experiences. Peer social support refers to supportive behaviors from peers that can

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enhance children’s functioning and resilience to difficulties (Bakalım & Taşdelen-Karçkay,

2016). Bakalım and Taşdelen-Karçkay argued that peer social support provides children with

emotional comfort that protects children against anxiety and stress, helps them cope with

difficulties via guidance and feedback. Indeed, peer social support is associated with a range of

positive outcomes, including children’s motivation, attention, academic attitudes, and

achievement (Bursal, 2017; Coolahan et al., 2000). Thus, peer social support is considered as a

primary indicator of school adaptiveness and academic success from preschool through

elementary school and above (Blandon et al., 2010; Coolahan et al. , 2000).

Peer victimization, on the other hand, has been linked with school maladjustment, which

refers to physical and emotional harms children receive from peers, such as being hit and teased.

Studies find that peer victimization is a precursor of loneliness and school avoidance (Buhs &

Ladd, 2001; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996) and is associated with low self-esteem, depression,

external behavioral problems, and academic failure (Alsaker, 1993; Blandon et al., 2010; Ladd et

al., 2017; Olweus, 1992). Researchers report that children who experience peer victimization

tend to be less engaged classroom activities, which, in turn, is associated with their emotional

adjustment difficulties and limits their access to opportunities and resources that are essential for

social and academic development (Blandon et al., 2010; Buhs & Ladd, 2001).

Although children’s perceptions of their peer social experiences are related to their actual

peer social interactions (Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996), only a few studies have conceptually

differentiated children’s perceived peer experiences from their actual peer experiences. This

differentiation is important because some researchers suggest that perceptions of being supported

by peers reflect children’s competency in peer interactions, which is associated with their

learning behaviors and school success (Blandon et al., 2010; Coolahan et al., 2000). Specifically,

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in the literature of peer isolation, the distinction between objective isolation and perceived

isolation has been established, with the former representing the actual quantity of peer

interactions and the latter capturing loneliness or the feeling of being isolated by peers (Danese

et al., 2009; Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009).

Differentiating perceived from actual peer social experience is also meaningful because

children’s perceptions might be more strongly associated with their social and emotional well-

being. On the one hand, children’s perceptions of their peer social experiences can shape their

self-perceptions or self-worth, which can then influence children’s social behaviors (Ogelman et

al., 2019) and their levels of being liked by peers (Önder et al., 2019). Önder et al. explained that

self-perception reflects one’s own competence and personality, which is established when

children perceive their strengths and weaknesses when interacting with others and that children

with low self-perception are likely to be passive and timid in peer interactions, which would

contribute to their being less liked by peers. On the other hand, Troop-Gordon et al. (2019)

discussed that support and victimization experiences in peer groups build children’s beliefs about

peers, which, according to social information processing theories, would shape their behavioral

and emotional responses to future interpersonal events. Some suggest that perceived isolation

tends to result in more severe and enduring consequences than objective isolation, because the

perceptions of being isolated can alter individuals’ social reasoning and information processing

(Danese et al., 2009; Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009). Specifically, Cacioppo and Hawkley

explained that the perception of being isolated by peers may trigger children’s confirmatory and

memorial bias and can lead to their negative interpretations of peers’ social moves, which in turn

may contribute to children’s misbehaviors and emotional maladaptiveness. Hence, although

perceived and actual peer social experiences are rarely distinguished in the broader sense of peer

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social experience, it stands to reason that perceived peer social support and perceived peer

victimization would shape children’s understandings about themselves and about others.

Therefore, there is a need to examine factors that may influence children’s perceptions of their

peer social experiences.

Teacher Influences on Peer Social Experiences

Besides peers, teachers represent another key dimension of classroom ecology (Hamre &

Pianta, 2001; Jerome et al., 2009). As noted earlier, however, interactions with teachers and

interactions with peers tend to be discussed separately (Hughes & Im, 2016; Wang et al., 2016),

except for only a few studies as elaborated below; such work has suggested that teachers’

relationships with individual children and their classroom social management can shape

children’s peer social experiences in the classroom.

For individual children, their interactions with teachers matter to their social experiences

with peers. This is because teacher-child interactions can be observed by all classmates, which

helps classmates draw inferences about children’s attributes and likeability and form a classroom

consensus about children’s reputations (Hughes & Im, 2016). Further, teacher-child closeness is

grounded in positive interactions, such as warm and open communications, between a teacher

and a child (Birch & Ladd, 1997), which forms a secure base for children to feel being cared and

connected to the classroom environment. Teacher-child closeness is associated with children’s

engagement in classroom activities and their social competences and peer acceptance (e.g., Birch

& Ladd, 1997; Gest & Rodkin, 2011; Hall-Lande et al., 2007; Pianta & Stuhlman, 2004).

Children with close relationships with teachers may also receive greater support from teachers,

which contributes to their social and academic development (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). On the

contrary, teacher-child conflicts contribute to peer disliking as well as school avoidance,

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externalizing behaviors, and decreased prosocial behaviors and cooperation (Hamre & Pianta,

2001; Hughes & Im, 2016).

At the classroom-level, teachers’ classroom management of interpersonal interactions

(i.e., classroom social management) serves to shape children’s peer social experience. Classroom

social management is a challenge and critical task for teachers, which requires them to be aware

of children’s social needs and to afford developmental opportunities for children to positively

interact with peers from diverse backgrounds (Farmer, Hamm, Dawes, Barko-Alva, & Cross,

2019). A commonly used tool to capture classroom social management is the Classroom

Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Downer et al., 2012; Hamre & Pianta, 2007; Pianta et al.,

2008), which features three domains of classroom management based on social and instructional

interpersonal interactions (i.e., emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional

support). These three domains are further categorized into nine dimensions. The current study

includes four dimensions that mainly focus on the social aspect of interactional interactions,

naming positive climate, which refers to interactions between teachers and children and among

children that feature enthusiasm, enjoyment, and respect; negative climate, which refers to

classroom interpersonal interactions that involve anger, aggression, or harshness; teacher

sensitivity, which represent the extent to which teachers provide comfort, reassurance, and

encouragement based on individual children’s needs; and behavior management, which refers to

teachers’ effectiveness in preventing and redirecting children’s misbehaviors. Warm and

sensitive interactions with teachers and well-managed classrooms promote classroom

inclusiveness and facilitate social connections among children, through which children develop

social and emotional competences, reduce problematic behaviors, and become less vulnerable to

peer victimizations (Cappella & Neal, 2012; Downer et al., 2012; Hamre & Pianta, 2001).

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Although teachers can influence children’s peer social experiences via multiple avenues

as reviewed above, few studies have taken into account different levels of teacher influences

simultaneously. Farmer et al. (2019) discussed that teachers are not only members in the

classroom society interacting directly with individual children, but, at the same time, they also

are leaders who act as an authority and a facilitator to manage classroom dynamics and to ensure

children following the rules. Hence, the current study aims to capture teachers’ multi-faceted

roles to have a more comprehensive understanding of teacher influence on children’s peer social

experiences in the classroom.

The Current Study

The current study focuses on children from preschool through grade three; during these

grades, positive peer experiences provide essential support to children’s development and

learning, whereas peer victimization occurs relatively more often than that in the later grades

(Ladd et al., 2017; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996). Thus, there is a need to investigate teacher roles

in managing classroom social dynamics during children’s primary years of schooling.

Although there has been some research examining certain teacher influence on children’s

peer social experiences, it is not clear whether teacher influences operate above and beyond the

influence of children’s actual peer social interactions. For the purpose of this study, children’s

actual peer interactions were operationalized as the number of reciprocal friendships and their

classroom reputation of peer victimization. Friendship is considered as the most important source

of peer support, which provides children with a context for skill acquisition and development and

helps children to validate their shared beliefs and identifies (Gifford-Smith & Brownell, 2003;

Ladd et al., 1996). Further, compared to unilateral friendships (i.e., one child identifies the other

as a friend but not vice versa), reciprocal friendships (i.e., children mutually identify each other

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as friends) tend to have higher quality, are more stable, and, therefore provide greater peer

support (e.g., Quinn & Hennessy, 2010). Classroom reputation of peer victimization reflects the

consensus among all classmates about the extent of harassment one experiences from peers.

Hughes and Im (2016) discussed that children’s disliking of a child tends to go beyond dyadic

antipathy and would be contributed greater by group-based reputation based on shared

observations. Both reciprocal friendship and classroom reputation of peer victimization

triangulate the perceptions from both children and peers, which, therefore, would be less biased

by individuals’ opinions.

In all, the current study aims to examine multiple levels of teacher influence on child-

perceived peer social support and peer victimization in the spring of the academic year when

controlling for those in the fall. Teacher influences include teachers’ closeness and conflict with

individual children and their classroom social management at the classroom-level as represented

by observations of positive climate, negative climate, teacher sensitivity, and behavior

management. A sub-aim is to determine whether the above teacher influences on children-

perceived social experiences are unique and operate beyond the influence of their actual peer

interactions manifested as the number of reciprocal friendships and classroom reputation of peer

victimization.

Methods

Participants

This study is part of a large federally funded project focused on advancing understanding

of early childhood learning experiences from preschool (pre-kindergarten) to third grade. The

study sample consisted of two cohorts of participants, recruited from two large school districts in

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a Midwestern state. Recruitment procedures were carried out in accordance with protocols to

protect human subjects as approved by the institutional review board (IRB) of the university.

Before the school year started, informational sessions were held in schools located within

district borders to recruit teachers. All children in classrooms taught by participating teachers

were eligible to enroll, and consent packets were sent home via backpack mail. Most participants

were recruited in the fall, although additional preschool classrooms were added in winter and

spring to meet recruitment goals. Consented teachers were asked to complete questionnaires

about their classrooms, their children, their teaching practices, and their own background

information. Consented children were administered direct assessments in fall and spring of the

school year.

The sample included 43 schools, 183 classrooms, and 2,678 consented children. As

summarized in Table 1, 50% of the participating children were girls, 66% were White, and 13%

were Hispanic/Latino(a). Twelve percent of the children came from households that primarily

spoke a language other than English and 10% of children had identified disabilities. Annual

family income was distributed bimodally with 27% of the participating families falling in the

lowest income bracket ($30,000 or lower) and 31% in the highest income bracket ($120,001 or

higher). Forty-five percent of the children’s mothers completed four-year college education or

higher. At the classroom level, an average classroom had 22 children (range = 12 ~ 29). Teachers

were mostly female (97%), White (96%), and non-Hispanic (99%). On average, they were 38

years old with 13 years of teaching experience. Ninety-four percent of the teachers had a

bachelor’s degree or higher, and 82% had a teaching certificate.

Measures

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To address the aims of the current study, we included measures of child-perceived peer

social experiences, teacher-child relationships, classroom social management, and actual peer

social interactions. Children’s family background and demographic information were collected

from caregiver and teacher questionnaires at the beginning of the school year.

Child-perceived peer social experiences. In fall and spring of the school year, one-on-

one child interviews were conducted by trained research staff in quiet areas of the school

hallway, and responses were recorded using a tablet in accordance with the approved study

protocols. Based on previous studies of peer relationship and children’s school adjustment

(Asher et al., 1984; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996; Ladd, 1990; Waters et al., 2012), the research

team developed measures of perceived peer social support comprising a total of 11 items (e.g.,

“How often would kids in your class help you if you are hurt?” and “How often would kids in

your class tell you you’re good at things?”) and perceived peer victimization consisting of four

items (e.g., “Does anyone in your class ever hit you?” and “Does anyone in your class ever say

mean things to you?”). All items used a three-point frequency scale (0 = Never, 1 = Sometimes, 2

= A lot), and the internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) ranged from .75 to .78 across scales and

time points. The responses from items on the same scale were averaged to create composite

scores for each child. In the analysis, spring scores were used as outcomes, and fall scores were

included as covariates.

Teacher-child relationships. In the fall, teachers reported on their closeness and conflict

with each child using the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta, 1991). The closeness

subscale included seven items (e.g., “I share an affectionate, warm relationship with this child”

and “If upset, this child will seek comfort from me”) and the conflict subscale contained eight

items (e.g., “This child and I always seem to be struggling with each other” and “Dealing with

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this child drains my energy”). All items used a five-point Likert-type scale (0 = Definitely does

not apply, 4 = Definitely applies) and the scales demonstrated strong internal consistency (alphas

ranged from .88 to .94). For analysis, the mean score of each subscale of the teacher-child

relationship was calculated for each child.

Classroom social management. Teacher’s classroom social management was captured

in the winter with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS, Pianta et al., 2008). As

noted earlier, although the original CLASS includes nine dimensions, the current study focuses

on four dimensions mainly from the social domain, including 1) positive climate, which reflects

the warmth, respect, and enjoyment communicated by verbal and non-verbal interactions, 2)

negative climate, which assesses the overall level of expressed negativity among teachers and

children in the classroom, 3) teacher sensitivity, which refers to the teacher’s awareness and

responsiveness to the various needs of individual children and the entire class, and 4) behavior

management, which encompasses the teacher’s use of clear behavioral expectations and effective

methods to prevent and redirect misbehavior. In each classroom, trained and reliable research

staff conducted two 30-minute observation cycles, where observers live-coded the teacher’s

practice or behavior as it contributed to the overall classroom environment on scales of 1 to 7 (1

= minimally characteristic, 7 = highly characteristic). Composite scores for each dimension

were created by averaging across the two cycles. To ensure reliability, research staff completed

extensive training sessions before entering the field, and ongoing quality checks were conducted

via biweekly drift meetings. In addition, 20% of all in-field observations were double-coded, and

inter-rater agreement (i.e., two coders scored within one point of difference on the same

dimension) ranged from .90 to .92.

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Peer social interactions. Peer social interactions including reciprocal friendships and

classroom reputation of peer victimization were collected in the spring based on a peer

nomination approach (Parkhurst & Asher, 1992), which has been found valid for children as

young as preschoolers (Chen et al., 2020; Daniel et al., 2016). We asked children to identify

classmates “who are your best friends” and “who gets picked on or teased?” Preschoolers were

presented with a photo roster of all children in their classrooms to facilitate the nomination,

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