Teachers’ and children’s perceptions about their relationships: examining the construct of dependency in the Greek sociocultural context

ABSTRACT

This study examines teachers’ and children’s perceptions of dependency, and their linkages with other relationship dimensions, in a cultural context with a more collectivistic orientation. Additionally, it examines the factorial validity and reliability of the Greek version of the Child Appraisal of Relationship with Teacher Scale (CARTS) and teacher-child perceptions' convergence of relationship quality. Participants were 348 kindergarten students and 35 teachers from Greek kindergarten classrooms. The measures used were the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) and CARTS. Results verified the factorial validity and internal consistency of the Greek CARTS. Results replicated previous findings suggesting a positive association between Closeness and Dependency in both teachers’ and children’s perceptions. The finding about the positive association between closeness and dependency in a cultural context with a more collectivistic orientation, challenges the cultural universality of the construct of dependency and highlights the need for a more in-depth examination of the construct of dependency.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher-child relationships
• CARTS
• dependency
• attachment
• STRS

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).