Do Teachers Have Different Mental Representations of Relationships With Children in Cases of Hyperactivity Versus Conduct Problems?

Abstract

The present study examined how different externalizing child behaviors (i.e., hyperactivity, conduct problems) were uniquely associated with teachers' mental representations of relationships with individual children. Participants were 61 teacher–child dyads from typical Dutch elementary schools. Using a two-wave design, teachers first reported about a child's behavior. Four months later, they were interviewed using the Teacher Relationship Interview to assess relationship representations. The Teacher Relationship Interview was rated by coders on 9 constructs that comprised 3 dimensions: content (e.g., sensitive practices of teachers); affect (e.g., positive and negative feelings); and process (e.g., coherence of narratives). Regression analyses revealed that teachers had higher levels of positive affect and sensitive practices when it came to hyperactivity, whereas teachers experienced more anger when it came to conduct problems. The results indicate that hyperactivity and conduct problems may uniquely contribute to teachers' mental representations of their relationships with children.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENTS

Rianne J. Bosman is a doctoral candidate at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam. Her main areas of interest include the antecedents and consequences of teacher–child relationships and interventions that aim to improve poor teacher–child relationships.

Marjolein Zee, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam. Her main areas of interest include the nature, antecedents, and consequences of teacher–child relationships and teachers' self-efficacy in relation to individual students with emotional and behavioral problems in elementary school.

Helma M. Y. Koomen, PhD, is an associate professor at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam. Her main areas of interest address teacher–child relationships and pedagogical practices in relation to emotional, behavioral, social, and academic adjustment of children with and without special needs and assessment of and intervention in teacher–child relationships.

Notes

1 When we refer to hyperactive behavior or hyperactivity in this study, we explicitly refer to the combination of hyperactivity and inattention

2 As ICC at the school level was very low (ICC = .03), it was not necessary to conduct multilevel analyses.

3 Interaction terms of Conduct Problems × Hyperactivity were also added in the regression models; however, these caused multicollinearity problems. Therefore, we decided to exclude the interaction terms from the models.