Bidirectional associations among teachers' burnout and classroom relational climate across an academic year.

In the present study, we examined bidirectional associations between two components of teachers' burnout (personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion) and classroom relational climate (closeness and conflict) across two time points within an academic year. Participants included 330 elementary school teachers (third and fourth grade) and 5081 students in a large, urban city in the northeastern United States. Students were primarily Hispanic/Latino (66%) or Black/African American (22%), and most were from low-income households. Forty-seven percent of teachers were White, 25% Black, and 31% identified as Hispanic/Latino. Two modeling approaches were used for preliminary detection of bidirectional relations among burnout and classroom relational climate. First, a crossed-lagged panel model showed a clear pattern from earlier relational climate to later burnout; closeness and conflict at Time 1 predicted personal accomplishment at Time 2, and conflict at Time 1 predicted emotional exhaustion at Time 2. No evidence was found for earlier burnout predicting later relational climate. Second, a set of latent change score models indicated that increases in closeness from Time 1 to Time 2 were associated with decreases in emotional exhaustion across the academic year. Together, findings provide preliminary evidence for associations from classroom relational climate to teacher burnout, but not the other way around. Implications of these findings for teachers and school psychologists are discussed.

How does inhibitory control predict emotion regulation in preschool? The role of individual children's interactions with teachers and peers.

Emotion regulation is foundational to children's psychological wellbeing and future school adjustment. As young children are spending increasing amounts of time in preschool programs, investigating how early childhood classrooms can foster emotion regulation development is warranted. In this study, we tested individual children's interactions with teachers and peers as potential mechanisms through which inhibitory control supports emotion regulation in the preschool classroom. Participants included 767 preschool children (49% female; M = 4.39 years old, SD = .08) from low-income households (income-to-needs ratio M = 1.45, SD = 1.06). Fifty percent of children were Black, 22% White, 13% Latino, and 15% Other race/ethnicity. Children completed direct assessments of inhibitory control in the fall, teachers reported on children's emotion regulation in the fall and spring of the preschool year, and trained observers rated the quality of individual children's interactions with teachers and peers in the fall, winter, and spring. Accounting for earlier emotion regulation, mediation analyses indicated that children's inhibitory control operates through individual children's (a) positive interactions with peers and (b) negative interactions with teachers and peers to support their subsequent emotion regulation. These findings underscore the role of the preschool classroom as an emotion socialization context for children from low-income households, along with providing additional evidence about the importance of social interactions to understand children's emotional development in context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Preschool Children's Observed Interactions with Teachers: Implications for Understanding Teacher-Child Relationships.

Theory and research point to the daily interactions between individual children and teachers as formative to teacher-child relationships, yet observed dyadic teacher-child interactions in preschool classrooms have largely been overlooked. This study provides a descriptive examination of the quality of individual children's interactions with their teacher as a basis for understanding one source of information theorized to inform children's and teachers' perceptions of their relationships with each other. Children's dyadic interactions with teachers, including their positive engagement, communication, and conflict, were observed across a large and racially/ethnically diverse sample of 767 preschool children (M = 4.39 years) at three time points in the year. On average, most children displayed low-to-moderate levels of positive engagement (78%), while nearly all children showed rare communication (81%) and conflict (99%) with the teacher. Boys demonstrated lower positive engagement and higher conflict with the teacher than girls. Black children were observed to demonstrate higher positive engagement with the teacher compared to White children. No differences in interaction quality were observed for Black children with a White teacher compared to White child-White teacher or Black child-Black teacher pairs. Results advance our understanding of dyadic teacher-child interactions in preschool classrooms and raise new questions to expand our knowledge of how teacher-child relationships are established, maintained, and modified, to ultimately support teachers in building strong relationships with each and every preschooler.

An Exploration of Electronic Media Use Profiles for Preschoolers of Low-Income Families.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the electronic media (e-media) use of preschoolers from low-income families comprehensively, in terms of platform interaction potential and content. METHODS: Parents of 380 preschoolers (mean age, 52.5 ± 3.7 months) from diverse, low-income backgrounds reported on their child's age of exposure to various e-media types, frequency of use, amount of background television, and listed all child shows/cartoons and adult shows/general audience shows the child watches, as well as all electronic games/apps the child plays. We calculated descriptive statistics and conducted latent profile analyses to characterize e-media use. RESULTS: Most children in the sample began watching TV before age 1 year and nearly half watch child shows/cartoons several times a day or more. Most children began playing games/apps before age 3 years and more than one quarter play games several times a day or more. More than 20% of children are exposed to >3 hours of background TV on a typical weekday and 30% are exposed to this amount on a typical weekend day. A Modest E-Media Use profile characterized most children in the sample (70%). Fewer children were characterized by a High Educational Games profile (14%) or a High Adult TV/Elevated Entertainment Games Use and Background TV profile (16%). CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, the 3 profiles reflect heterogeneous use patterns with regard to platform interaction potential and educational quality during the course of a typical week. Additional research is warranted to assess linkages between e-media use profiles and indicators of school readiness in cognitive, academic, and social and behavioral domains in diverse, low-income samples.

The role of teacher-student relationships in predicting teachers' personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion.

Teaching is a uniquely stressful profession. Though previous work has drawn attention to the high levels of burnout teachers report experiencing and its impact on students, comparatively less work has investigated what influences teachers' burnout itself. Guided by Lazarus' (1991) transactional model of stress and coping, the present study explored the links between the proximal resource of teachers' relationships with students and burnout. Specifically, we investigated the association between classroom aggregated teacher reports of relational closeness and conflict, and two components of burnout: personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion. Results indicated that teachers who reported close relationships with their students also reported higher levels of personal accomplishment over the academic year, whereas more conflictual relationships were associated with increased emotional exhaustion. Implications for relational quality with students as a central influence on teachers' wellbeing are discussed.

Rendimiento académico y las dimensiones personal y contextual del aprendizaje socioemocional: evidencias de su asociación en estudiantes chilenos / Academic Performance and Personal and Contextual Dimensions of Socioemotional Learning: Evidence of its Association in Chilean Students

El presente estudio respalda la creciente evidencia empírica sobre la relación entre la dimensión socioemocional y el rendimiento académico. Mediante análisis de correlación y regresión se testeó en estudiantes chilenos de educación básica la asociación entre el rendimiento académico y las dimensiones individual (autoestima y bienestar socioemocional) y contextual (percepción del clima social escolar) del aprendizaje socioemocional. Bienestar socioemocional y percepción del clima social escolar respecto a relaciones de pares y lugares de la escuela, mostraron una relación significativa con el aumento en el desempeño académico. Los hallazgos son discutidos en términos de sus implicancias para la práctica educativa y para futuras investigaciones.

This study supports the growing empirical evidence regarding the relationship between the socioemotional dimension and academic achievement. Through correlation and regression analyses the associations between individual (self-steem and socioemotional well-being) and contextual (perception of the school social climate) features of socioemotional learning and academic success in Chilean elementary students were tested. Socioemotional well-being and perception of school social climate with regards to peer relations and places at school were significantly related to improvements in academic achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for educational practice and future research.