Teacher reports of children's competence and problem behaviors are an important source of information on psychopathology. The school context is also an agent of developmental change. This study examines teacherchild relationships and deflections in child adjustment over the school-entry to grade 2 period in 436 children. The Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) was related to two indices of deflections in predicted child adjustment: (a) residual scores obtained from regressing teacher reports from grade 1 on kindergarten teacher reports, and (b) false positive predictions of retention or referral for special education in the K-l period.Children with whom kindergarten teachers reported a positive relationship were rated in spring of grade I as better adjusted than was predicted on the basis of identical ratings from the fall of the kindergarten year; the converse was also true. False-positive retention/referral predictions had more positive relationships with kindergarten teachers than did true positives. A second set of analyses examined second grade teacher ratings of child adjustment and child-teacher relationships in two groups of children with different child-teacher relationship histories in kindergarten. Children with warm, close, communicative relationships with kindergarten teachers were better adjusted and had more positive child-teacher relationships in second grade than those with angry, dependent child-teacher relationships in kindergarten. Results supported the view that children's relationships with teachers are an important component of adaptation in school, and that they can play a role in deflecting the course of development in the school context.

Research on teacher-child relationships is based on two foundations: (1) the common experience of teachers, parents, and children that the child's relationship with his or her teacher is an especially important component of the school experience and related to child adjustment and (2) research in social development, attachment theory, and teaching and learning that increasingly shows the importance of adult-child relationships as contexts for development. The present study blends theory on child-adult attachment with research on the importance of early school experiences in determining the trajectories of children's school progress (Sroufe, 1989). Currently, there is a noticeable lack of theory regarding the processes by which children move from the home or day-care context to the school context and the factors that relate to this transition and determine adjustment in school. Moreover, as a society faced with enormous rates of school failure, attention to new forms of inquiry into school adjustment may lead to policies and practices that attenuate the social risk associated with high rates of early school failure.Alexander and Entwisle (1988) argue that few school experiences after third grade have enough weight to alter the already established course of achievement. Research on preschool children indicates that an important element of adjusting to school is a relationship with a teacher that serves the child's development and education (Sroufe, 1983). In previous work (Pianta and Nimetz, 1991; Pianta and Steinberg, 19911, we have shown that patterns of teacher-child relationships in kindergar- Preparation of this chapter was supported by the Commonwealth Center for the Education of Teachers, University of Virginia and James Madison University. NEW DIRECTIONSFOR CHI1.D DEVELOPMENT, no. 57. Fall 1992 0 Jossey-Bass Publishers 61 62 BEYOND THE PARENT: THE ROLE OF OTHER ADULTS IN CHILDREN'S LIVESten (for example, conflicted, opedclose, and dependent) are related to behavior in the home and are predictive of subsequent school adjustment. Erickson and Pianta (1989) suggest that parent-child attachment patterns are closely linked with how the child negotiates the social and academic demands of school, via the representational models of self, other, and relationships that mediate experience and are transferred across contexts. Although teacher-child relationships may have tremendous impact in altering the course of school adjustment (Pederson, Faucher, and Eaton, 19781, they have not been subjected to any systematic empirical research. Studies of teacher-child relationships could be important tests of theories suggesting coherence and stability in relationships (Sroufe, 1983). However, most studies documenting the positive impact of the teacher-child relationship are case reports (Pederson, Faucher, and Eaton, 1978) or comments on high-risk populations (Garmezy, 1984;Werner and Smith, 1982). Issues examined in this chapter include the role that relationships between children and parents and children and teachers play ...

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This study establishes a foundation on which to build quality-of-care assessment tools to evaluate the treatment of early-stage prostate cancer. The next step is to field-test the indicators for feasibility, reliability, validity, and clinical utility in a population-based sample. This work will begin to inform medical decision-making for patients and their physicians.