Meta-Analytic Associations Between the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale and Students’ Social Competence With Peers

Abstract

According to developmental psychologists, more supportive and less conflictual relationships with teachers play a positive role in children’s social behavior with peers both concurrently and in the future. This meta-analysis examined the association between teacher-student relationship quality, as measured by the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS), and social competence from early childhood through high school. Based on nearly 30,000 students from 87 studies, the weighted average association between teacher-student relationship quality and social competence with peers was r = .31 (z = .32; 95% CI: .28, 37). Neither age nor length of time between assessments were associated with effect size, suggesting that teacher-student relationships continue to be associated with children’s social competence beyond the early years. Additionally, the STRS total score was the best predictor of social competence, whereas dependency was more weakly associated with social competence. The findings of this study suggest that teacher-student relationship quality as measured by the STRS is an important correlate of both concurrent and future social competence from early childhood to adolescence.

Impact Statement

Closer and less conflictual teacher-student relationships are consistently associated with higher social skills, peer relationships, and social acceptance among peers from early childhood through adolescence. Further work implementing teacher training programs that aim to improve teacher-student relationship quality as a mechanism for enhancing students’ social competence with peers is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of such trainings across ages and sociocultural contexts.

Keywords:

• student teacher relationships
• social competence
• meta-analysis

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

• Chunyan Yang

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank the scholars who provided data in response to our requests as well as those who provided recommendations for research articles to include in the meta-analysis: Abbey Eisenhower, Alicia Westbrook, Allison Ryan, Arya Ansari, Brianne Coulombe, Bülbin Sucuoğlu, Carlos Valiente, Christina Rucinski, Claudio Longobardi, Edvin Bru, Fanny de Swart, Feihong Wang, Frank Vitaro, Huiyoung Shin, Hyekyun Rhee, Ibrahim Acar, Jan Blacher, Jantine Spilt, Jill Locke, Karen Bierman, Keisha Mitchell, Laura Brumariu, Linda Harrison, Maaike Engels, Madelyn Labella, Marjorlein Zee, Marloes Hendrickx, May Britt Drugli, Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck, Özge Metin Aslan, Rhonda Tabbah, Robert Pianta, Sarah Bardack, Scott Graves Jr., Selen Demirtaş-Zorbaz, Shiyi Chen, Stefania Sette, Sterett Mercer, Visvaldas Legkauskas, Xiuyun Lin, and Youli Mantzicopoulos. Additionally, the authors express their gratitude to Daniel Berry, Elizabeth Carlson, Nidhi Kohli, Robert Krueger, and Sylia Wilson, who provided valuable feedback on an early version of this manuscript.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

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

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices ­Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/c97wu/ and https://osf.io/c97wu/.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data for this analysis are available at https://osf.io/c97wu/

Notes

1 Codebooks, full search strings for all databases, analysis scripts, and raw data for the comprehensive screening are available on the project’s Open Science Framework (OSF) page (https://osf.io/c97wu/).

Additional information

Funding

This work was in part supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under [Award Number T32MH015755] to the first author and by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under [Grant No. 00039202] to the second author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation. This analysis was also supported by a Dr. Ruth Winifred Howard Diversity Scholarship from the University of Minnesota to the first author. The funding sources for this project had no role in the conduct of the research or preparation of this article.

Notes on contributors

Sophia W. Magro

Sophia W. Magro, MA, is a Doctoral Candidate in Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Science at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development. Her research focuses on the roles that parents, teachers, and schools play in together supporting children’s development of socioemotional skills in the early years, especially for children at-risk for psychopathology. She is also interested in early childhood education intervention programs and the effects of education on physical and mental health across the lifespan.

Kelsey A. Hobbs

Kelsey A. Hobbs, MA, is a Doctoral Candidate in Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on structural psychopathology and how personality relates to and informs the study of psychopathology from a dimensional approach. She is interested in identifying the causal mechanisms that underlie the development of psychopathology, especially in relation to the development of personality disorders. She is also interested in the relationship between psychopathology and health, and how maladaptive personality traits impact those relationships.

Pearl Han Li

Pearl Han Li, PhD, earned her doctorate in Developmental Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at Duke University. She is interested in exploring the social learning experiences of underrepresented populations in the field. She has conducted developmental research on the contextual and individual factors that support children’s critical thinking and moral learning across cultures.

Patrick Swenson

Patrick Swenson, BA, is a recent graduate of the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Minnesota. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Applied Behavior Analysis.

Amy Riegelman

Amy Riegelman, MLIS, is a Social Sciences and Evidence Synthesis Librarian at the University of Minnesota, where she is a co-chair of the Systematic Review and Evidence Synthesis Service and is the liaison to the Psychology, Educational Psychology, Child Development, and Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences departments.

Joseph A. Rios

Joseph A. Rios, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Quantitative Methodology at the University of Minnesota. He earned his doctoral degree in Educational Measurement and Psychometrics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His primary area of research is in identifying effective methods for detecting and modeling rapid guessing behavior utilizing response pattern and log-file information. In addition, his research focuses on improving inclusion in assessment design and score reporting practices by addressing challenges in fairly measuring minoritized populations (e.g., ethnic and linguistic subpopulations).

Glenn I. Roisman

Glenn I. Roisman, PhD, is the Robert Holmes Beck Chair of Ideas in Education and a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development. Dr. Roisman’s scholarly interests concern the legacy of early relationship experiences as a foundation for social, cognitive, and biological development across the lifespan.