Background: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is consistently associated with poor school-level outcomes. Although school engagement is recognized as a protective factor associated with increased academic achievement, school retention/completion, and student well-being in the general population, little research has focused on school…

Equitable assessment of students' mathematical thinking is imperative for effective instruction. This two-part study investigated teachers' judgement of students' mathematical thinking. In Study One, we used a national data set to determine the correlation between teachers' judgement of students' mathematical thinking and scores from a…

The authors identified trajectories of teacher-child relationship conflict and closeness from Grades 1 to 6, and associations between these trajectories and externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 11 years old among low-income, urban boys (N = 262). There were three main findings. Nagin cluster analyses indicated five trajectories for…

Previous work has provided evidence that both merit and social relationships guide resource distribution in children. However, no prior studies have addressed the question of how children as third-party distributors balance the 2 factors when they are in conflict with one another. Two studies tested 7-year-old Chinese children's allocation of 3…

When children experience conflict in relationships with their teachers during early education, they perform more poorly on measures of language development and overall academic competence. Whereas children who have close relationships with teachers, often perform better on these measures. A close teacher-child relationship may be important for…

The student-teacher relationship plays an important role in the development of academic and social skills in early elementary (Torres, Domitrovich, & Bierman, 2015; Vitaro, Boivin, Brendgen, Girard, & Dionne, 2012; etc.). Although the importance of the student-teacher relationship is well-established, the importance for special education…

Teaching is a stressful profession, and teacher stress has been shown to be associated with job dissatisfaction, attrition from the field, and negative outcomes for teachers and their students. A major contributor to teacher stress is disruptive student behavior. Given that students with or at-risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder…

Between-child and within-child effects of teacher-student warmth and conflict on children's peer-nominated disliking and liking across Grades 1-4 (ages 6-10) were investigated in a sample of 746 ethnically diverse and academically at-risk children in Texas. Multilevel modeling controlled for time-invariant between-child differences while modeling…

According to bioecological theory, children's experiences in one developmental setting are meaningful for their adjustment in other settings. In the current study, the quality of children's relationships with classroom teachers, afterschool program staff, and mothers in 1st grade (n = 137) were examined in relation to their academic,…

Teachers provide emotional and behavioral supports essential for success in the classroom. This study examined the roles of child interpersonal skills, teacher expectations, and school racial and poverty compositions on the quality of relationships formed between teachers and children. A subsample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

The present study examined whether teacher-child closeness and conflict across kindergarten and first grade varied by gender and disruptive behavior at kindergarten entry within a sample of 324 predominantly Black children from low-income, urban households. Three main findings emerged from the analyses. First, contrary to findings from previous…

Studies with extensive observations of real-life emotions at school are rare but might be especially useful for predicting school-related outcomes. This study evaluated observations of negative emotion expressivity in lunch and recreation settings across kindergarten, first grade, and second grade (N = 301), kindergarten teachers' reports of…

Research Findings: Current research regarding gender differences in educational settings at all socioeconomic levels suggests that young males are at high risk for developing academic, social, and emotional difficulties, resulting in increased disconnection from self and society. This study examined gender differences in the teacher-child…

Teachers' ratings of problem behaviors are gathered as a matter of course in psychological evaluations of children. Teacher ratings are weighted heavily in the results of educational evaluations (Frick et al., 2010). With such heavy emphasis on teacher behavioral ratings, it is important to understand the extent to which conflict between…

Teacher-child relationships have been linked to children's classroom engagement and to academic achievement. However, researchers have paid minimal attention to individual child factors that predict the development of these relationships. In the current study, we examined executive function (EF) prior to school entry as a predictor of…