Mechanism for Enhancing Equity in Early Childhood Settings: The Influence of Parent and Teacher Reports of Parent-Teacher Relationships on Perceptions of Child Behavior

Background and Purpose: A growing body of research demonstrates the influence of child race on teachers' perceptions of children’s behavior, with Black preschoolers more likely to be perceived as aggressive, disruptive, and defiant compared to White peers. It is critical to understand what factors are associated with teachers' biased perceptions of child self-regulation and where points of intervention exist. One area long undervalued in the field of early childhood education is the parent-teacher relationship. Despite the long-held understanding of the benefits of positive parent-teacher relationships, little work has examined the direct association between parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of their current parent-teacher relationship and child behavior; even less is known about how these associations differ by child race.

Methods: The current study is from a longitudinal study of preschool children, their caregivers, and their teachers (n=126) recruited from 22 classrooms in a medium-sized, northeastern city. Teachers and caregivers completed measures of child self-regulation and the parent-teacher relationship (PTR), and teachers completed a measure of student-teacher conflict. Participating children were between age 3 (40.2%) and age 4 (58.8%), over half were female (58.3%), and 72.4% of children were identified as Latino, 28.3% as Black, and 11.8% another race (including White, Asian, and Arabic).

Multiple regression and moderation analyses were conducted in Mplus using the “CLUSTER” options to correct for nesting within classrooms. Interaction terms were included between dummy coded variables for child race/ethnicity and PTR with Latino children as the reference group. Similar to other work, the correlation between parent and teacher-ratings of child self-regulation was low (r = .35) thus separate models were run for parent- and teacher-reported child self-regulation.

Results: In the teacher-reported main effects model, student-teacher conflict was significantly associated with teachers’ reports of the child’s self-regulation (p < .001). Contrary to our hypothesis, PTR did not significantly predict self-regulation. However, the interaction between race and PTR was significant for teacher’s reports of Black children’s self-regulation (p = .001). When teachers reported a low PTR with parents of Black children, they reported significantly higher child self-regulation problems, compared to when teachers reported a high PTR.

In the parent-reported main effects model, higher PTR was related to lower self-regulation problems (p = .006) and higher student-teacher conflict was associated with higher self-regulation problems (p < .001); the variables predicted 36% of the variance in self-regulation (p < .001). Child covariates were not significantly related to self-regulation. There was no interaction between child race and PTR.

Conclusions and Implications: The present study explores a protective strategy existent in all preschool settings, the parent-teacher relationship, which was related in this study to both teacher and caregivers’ perceptions of child behavior. Teachers’ perceptions of positive relationships with parents of Black children may be especially protective, as they were related to significantly lower self-regulation problems; in contrast, teachers’ perceptions of more negative parent-teacher relationships may be especially harmful. Disseminating these findings to preschool teachers and administrators will support development and dissemination of interventions that strengthen parent-teacher relationships and reduce educational disparities in preschools.