The effects on students' emotional and behavioural difficulties of teacher–student interactions, students' social skills and classroom context

Abstract

Children's emotional and behavioural difficulties are the result of multiple individual, social and contextual factors working in concert. The current paper proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting students' emotional and behavioural difficulties in classrooms, by taking into consideration teacher-student interactions, students' social skills and classroom context. Based on Bronfenbrenner's model, according to which process, person and context are the main sources of children's development, the current paper combines three theoretical approaches: firstly, in terms of process, the systems communication approach, which refers to teacher-student interactions; secondly, in terms of person, social and emotional learning, which refers to children's social skills; and thirdly, in terms of classroom context, the achievement goal theory, with its emphasis on the mastery of classroom goal structure. Empirical support for the framework resulted in the administration of four instruments to 962 primary students: (a) QTI for teacher-student interactions, (b) MESSY for students' social skills; (c) CGS for classroom context; and (d) SDQ for students' emotional and behavioural difficulties. It was found that students' possession of social skills had a prominent role in the prediction of emotional and behavioural difficulties, while teacher-student interactions and classroom context also affected students' emotional and behavioural difficulties. This perspective provides educators with a theoretical and practical tool for understanding emotional and behavioural difficulties.

School Environments and Elementary School Children’s Well-Being in Northwestern Mexico

“…Even though this interaction is composed by many other elements, this relationship is the one that plays the most important role when it comes to meeting educational objectives (Bertoglia, 2008). Affective teacherstudent communication and interaction plays an important role in building a teacher-student support relationship and a positive classroom environment (Roorda et al, 2011;Poulou, 2014).…”

Lingvoecology of classroom discourse: student discourse practices and teacher perceptions

“…Probably the main focus in child development is constructing their responsibility instead of obedience. The latest findings in this field reveal that domination strategies in teacher-student interactions and classroom context affect students' emotional and behavioral difficulties [15]. The main emotion underlying this speech behavior pattern is strong dislike (in some cases even disgust) formed by long-accumulated fear and frustration.…”

Influence of school leadership style on effective teaching and teacher-student interaction

“…The Teaching Through Interactions framework theoretical model posits teacher-student interactions as a central driver for student learning (Hafen et al, 2015), and teacher-student interactions fall into three domains: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support (Downer et al, 2015). Teacher-student interactions and classroom context affected students' emotional and behavioral difficulties (Poulou, 2014;Rimm-Kaufman et al, 2015). The interactions in the classroom had a positive effect on students' learning achievement, and students and teachers of the same type tend to have more positive interactions (Sun & Wu, 2016;Eliasson et al, 2016;Le et al, 2017).…”