The relational side of teachers' self-efficacy: Assimilation and contrast effects of classroom relational climate on teachers' self-efficacy.

Although much is known about the sources of teachers' self-efficacy (TSE), less attention has been paid to the social-contextual specificity of TSE and the processes influencing the relevance of TSE information sources. This study investigated both dyad-level relationships and the classroom relational climate as predictors of TSE at the student and classroom level. Additionally, we explored two competing hypotheses-assimilation and contrast-articulating how teachers use information conveyed by classroom relationship experiences as a heuristic to interpret relationship experiences with individual students as a TSE source. Elementary school teachers (N = 86; 72.05% female) completed the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale and Student-Specific Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale for randomly selected children (N = 687, 50.1% girls, Grades 3-6) from their classes. Doubly latent multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test for associations of Closeness and Conflict with TSE at both the student (L1) and classroom level (L2). Contextual effects, corresponding to associations of classroom-level Closeness and Conflict with TSE above the same associations at the student level, were calculated to test assimilation and contrast hypotheses. At L1, results indicated positive associations between Closeness and TSE and negative associations between Conflict and TSE. At L2, only Conflict was negatively associated with TSE. Consistent with the contrast hypothesis, the contextual effect of Closeness, but not Conflict, was negative and significant. Hence, teachers' judgments of a relatively close classroom relational climate may lead them to perceive relational closeness with individual students in a more negative light, resulting in lower levels of TSE toward these students.

Parent-child conflict during homeschooling in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: A key role for mothers' self-efficacy in teaching.

To contain the COVID-19 pandemic schools have been closed in many countries. Children stayed at home and were assisted by their parents with their schoolwork. Evidently, homeschooling puts extra demands on parents. We presumed that parents' sense of efficacy in teaching would play a key role in how they cope with this extra task of homeschooling. In particular, we hypothesized that parental characteristics (level of parental education and stress) and social contextual factors (household chaos and school support) would contribute to parents' teaching self-efficacy and that, in turn, a lower efficacy would result in more parent-child conflict during home schooling. Participants were 173 mothers of children in kindergarten or early elementary schools, who provided information for one of their children about interpersonal conflicts around schoolwork before and during school closure. Additionally, they reported on their self-efficacy in teaching, perceived stress during lockdown, home chaos, and school support. Path analyses indicated that mothers' perceived stress and household chaos were associated with a lower sense of efficacy in teaching, whereas school support, but not level of parental education, was related to a higher level of teaching self-efficacy. Higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs, in turn, were associated with a lower degree of mother-child conflict during schoolwork, even after controlling for prior levels of conflict. We discuss how the results of this study might be used to foster parents' self-efficacy in teaching and thereby decrease the amount of parent-child conflict during parents' support with schoolwork.

Catching sight of children with internalizing symptoms in upper elementary classrooms.

Teachers play a crucial role in the assessment of children's internalizing symptoms but may not always succeed in accurately identifying such symptoms in class. Using a multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) approach, this study aimed to explore teacher and child characteristics that may explain measurement bias in teachers' ratings of internalizing symptoms at the between- and within-teacher level. Upper elementary school teachers (N = 92, 74.9% female) filled out the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Student-Teacher Relationship Scale, and Student-Specific Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale for randomly selected children (N = 690, 50.5% girls, Grades 3-6) from their classrooms. Participating teachers and children also responded to several background questions. Multilevel SEMs suggested that teachers' self-efficacy beliefs toward, relationship experiences with, and externalizing symptom ratings of individual children affected their ratings of these children's internalizing symptoms at the within-teacher level. Specifically, given equal levels of internalizing behavior, teachers were likely to systematically under-identify symptoms of anxiety and over-identify bullying for children with more externalizing behavior and conflictual relationships, or in circumstances where teachers had lower self-efficacy. Children with high levels of closeness received systematically higher ratings on somatic complaints and lower ratings on solitary behavior and peer problems. At the between-teacher level, less experienced teachers were more likely to over-identify symptoms of worries than were more experienced teachers, given equal levels of internalizing symptoms. As such, these findings extend the limited body of evidence on children's internalizing symptoms in upper elementary school.

Using relationship-focused reflection to improve teacher-child relationships and teachers' student-specific self-efficacy.

The present study evaluated whether LLInC (Leerkracht-Leerling Interactie Coaching in Dutch, or Teacher-Student Interaction Coaching), a teacher-based coaching-intervention, yielded improvements in dyadic affective teacher-child relationships in elementary school (Grades 2-6). Based on attachment theory, LLInC aims to foster more flexible and differentiated mental representations of teachers' relationships with individual children with whom they experience relationship difficulties. Using a quasi-experimental design, we compared an intervention group of teachers (n = 46 teachers and 92 children) receiving LLInC with a control group receiving no form of intervention (n = 32 teachers and 88 children). To investigate possible transfer effects, we asked teachers from the intervention group to report on their relationships and self-efficacy beliefs regarding two other children with whom they experienced relationship difficulties as well (n = 46 teachers and 81 children). Multilevel models were used to examine intervention effects on teachers' perceptions of relationship quality (i.e., Closeness, Conflict, Dependency), and teachers' student-specific self-efficacy beliefs for Behavior Management and Emotional Support. Teachers receiving LLInC reported short-term improvements in Closeness and self-efficacy beliefs for Emotional Support and decreases in Conflict as compared to control teachers. Similar improvements in Closeness and self-efficacy for Emotional Support were found for the intervention-transfer group as compared to control teachers. Also, teachers receiving LLInC had short-term and longer-term improvements in self-efficacy beliefs for Behavior Management as compared to control teachers. These improvements regarding Behavior Management were not found for the intervention-transfer group.

Don't forget student-teacher dependency! A Meta-analysis on associations with students' school adjustment and the moderating role of student and teacher characteristics.

A meta-analytic approach was used to examine associations between student-teacher dependency and students' school adjustment (engagement, achievement, externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, and prosocial behavior). Furthermore, we investigated whether associations between dependency and school adjustment were moderated by student and teacher characteristics. In total, the meta-analysis included 28 studies (N = 7849 students) from preschool to upper elementary school. The results showed that the overall associations between dependency, on the one hand, and engagement, achievement, and prosocial behavior, on the other, were negative and small to medium, whereas associations with externalizing and internalizing behavior were positive and medium (externalizing behavior) or medium to large (internalizing behavior). As far as moderator analyses were significant, they were in line with the academic risk hypothesis (i.e., stronger associations for at-risk students).

Understanding cross-cultural differences in affective teacher-student relationships: A comparison between Dutch and Chinese primary school teachers and students.

The affective quality of teacher-student relationships (TSRs) has mostly been studied in Western contexts and little is known how findings generalize to Eastern contexts. Therefore, the present study examined measurement invariance, mean differences, and agreement in teachers' and students' perceptions of relationship quality between the Netherlands and China. The sample consisted of 789 primary school students (51% girls) and 35 teachers (80% female) from the Netherlands, and 587 primary school students (53% girls) and 14 teachers (93% female) from Zhejiang, China. Both teachers and students reported about the quality of their mutual relationships. Structural equation modeling showed that teachers' perceptions of closeness, conflict and dependency, as well as students' perceptions of closeness and conflict in the relationship, reached partially strong invariance. Chinese students perceived more closeness and less conflict with teachers than Dutch students. Chinese teachers also reported less conflict but comparable levels of closeness and dependency as Dutch teachers. Chinese teacher-student dyads had higher agreement on closeness but lower agreement on conflict than Dutch teacher-student dyads. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Pathways Into Literacy: The Role of Early Oral Language Abilities and Family Risk for Dyslexia.

The present study investigated the role of early oral language and family risk for dyslexia in the two developmental pathways toward reading comprehension, through word reading and through oral language abilities. The sample contained 237 children (164 at family risk for dyslexia) from the Dutch Dyslexia Program. Longitudinal data were obtained on seven occasions when children were between 4 and 12 years old. The relationship between early oral language ability and reading comprehension at the age of 12 years was mediated by preliteracy skills and word-decoding ability for the first pathway and by later language abilities for the second pathway. Family risk influenced literacy development through its subsequent relations with preliteracy skills, word decoding, and reading comprehension. Although performance on language measures was often lower for the family-risk group than for the no-family-risk group, family risk did not have a specific relation with either early or later oral language abilities.

Similarities and dissimilarities between teachers' and students' relationship views in upper elementary school: The role of personal teacher and student attributes.

The present study aimed to advance insight into similarities and dissimilarities between teachers' and students' views of closeness and conflict in their dyadic relationship, and personal teacher and student attributes that contribute to these views. In total, 464 students (50.2% girls) and 62 teachers (67.5% females) from grades 4 to 6 participated in this study. Teachers filled out questionnaires about their background characteristics, self-efficacy (TSES), and student-teacher relationship perceptions (STRS) and students answered questions about their demographics and the student-teacher relationship quality (SPARTS). Peer-nominations were used to measure students' internalizing and externalizing behavior. Tests for measurement invariance suggested that the conflict and closeness constructs both approximated similarity across students and teachers. Multilevel structural equation models furthermore indicated that students' relationship perceptions, and conflict in particular, were predicted by their own gender, socioeconomic status, and internalizing and externalizing behavior. Additionally, teaching experience negatively predicted students' perceived conflicts. Teachers' relationship perceptions were both predicted by their own characteristics (teaching experience) and student features (gender, socioeconomic status, and externalizing behavior). These predictors explained between 39% and 61% of the variance in student- and teacher-perceived closeness and conflict. Last, teachers' general self-efficacy was positively associated with mean levels of closeness, and negatively associated with mean levels of conflict across student-teacher dyads.

Inter- and intra-individual differences in teachers' self-efficacy: A multilevel factor exploration.

This study explored inter- and intra-individual differences in teachers' self-efficacy (TSE) by adapting Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy's (2001) Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) to the domain- and student-specific level. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the factor structure underlying this adapted instrument, and to test for violations of measurement invariance over clusters. Results from 841 third- to sixth-grade students and their 107 teachers supported the existence of one higher-order factor (Overall TSE) and four lower-order factors (Instructional Strategies, Behavior Management, Student Engagement, and Emotional Support) at both the between- and within-teacher level. In this factor model, intra-individual differences in TSE were generally larger than inter-individual differences. Additionally, the presence of cluster bias in 18 of 24 items suggested that the unique domains of student-specific TSE at the between-teacher level cannot merely be perceived as the within-teacher level factors' aggregates. These findings underscore the importance of further investigating TSE in relation to teacher, student, and classroom characteristics.

Student-teacher relationship quality and academic adjustment in upper elementary school: the role of student personality.

This study tested a theoretical model considering students' personality traits as predictors of student-teacher relationship quality (closeness, conflict, and dependency), the effects of student-teacher relationship quality on students' math and reading achievement, and the mediating role of students' motivational beliefs on the association between student-teacher relationship quality and achievement in upper elementary school. Surveys and tests were conducted among a nationally representative Dutch sample of 8545 sixth-grade students and their teachers in 395 schools. Structural equation models were used to test direct and indirect effects. Support was found for a model that identified conscientiousness and agreeableness as predictors of close, nonconflictual relationships, and neuroticism as a predictor of dependent and conflictual relationships. Extraversion was associated with higher levels of closeness and conflict, and autonomy was only associated with lower levels of dependency. Students' motivational beliefs mediated the effects of dependency and student-reported closeness on reading and math achievement.