Teacher–child relationships in the context of poverty: the role of frequent school mobility

ABSTRACT

Children's relationships with their teachers are critical for classroom-based learning, but children growing up in poverty may be at risk for lower-quality relationships with teachers. Little is known about how changing schools, one poverty-related risk, affects teacher–child relationships. Using growth curve models that control for a host of other poverty-related risks, this study explores the association between children changing schools frequently (defined as three or more school moves) between preschool and third grade and the quality of their relationships with their teachers over these five years in a low-income, ethnic-minority sample. Children who frequently moved schools were reported to be less close to their teachers in third grade and experienced steeper declines in closeness than children who did not change schools frequently. Moreover, the effects of frequent school mobility at third grade were robust to other poverty-related risks, including residential mobility, parental education risk, family income, and single-parent households. Changing schools was unrelated to children's conflict with teachers. We discuss these findings in the context of policies that support students’ transitions when changing schools.

KEYWORDS:

• School mobility
• teacher–child relationships
• low-income families
• longitudinal
• early elementary

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Dr. Rachel D. McKinnon is currently a Congressional Policy Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Research on Child Development. Much of the work included in this study was completed while she was a graduate student at New York University. Her research interests include understanding childhood development of self-regulation as a school readiness skill, particularly among children from low-income families.

Dr. Allison Friedman-Krauss is an Assistant Research Professor at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Much of the work included in this study was completed while she was a graduate student at New York University. Her research interests include evaluating early childhood education programs and interventions, state preschool policy, and cognitive and social-emotional development and health of children growing up in poverty.

Dr. Amanda L. Roy is an Assistant Professor of Community and Prevention Research in the Psychology Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research explores the ways in which environmental risks and protective factors shape individual health and development.

Dr. C. Cybele Raver is Deputy Provost at New York University. She provides University-wide leadership for strengthening NYU's position among top-tier Research I institutions of higher education. Dr. Raver's own program of research focuses on early learning and development in the contexts of poverty and policy. She also examines the mechanisms that support children's cognitive and emotional outcomes in the context of early educational intervention.

ORCID

Rachel D. McKinnon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5819-2696

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by New York University's Institute of Human Development and Social Change, as well as by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305B080019 and Grant R305B140035. The project described was also supported by Award R01HD046160 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, or the National Institutes of Health.