Teachers’ Representations of Their Relationships with Students
Associations with Their Emotional Expressiveness and Emotion Socialization Practices in the Context of Early Childhood Education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22048846 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pamela Watkins Garner (George Mason University), Hideko H Bassett (0000-0001-5409-8099, George Mason University), Julia Madeleine Shadur (George Mason University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 829 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Education Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/educsci16060829 |
| OpenAlex | W7162339120 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 65 |
Positive teacher–student relationships in early childhood predict stronger academic and social–emotional outcomes, whereas conflictual or dependent relationships contribute to children’s stress and behavioral and academic difficulties. While prior research emphasizes teachers’ observable relational behaviors, fewer studies explore the internal emotional and cognitive processes that shape these relationships. This mixed-methods study examined how preschool teachers’ emotion socialization practices (i.e., emotion coaching and dismissing) and their classroom expressions of positive and negative emotions relate to their mental representations of their relationships with students. Quantitative analyses tested whether teachers’ emotional expressiveness moderated associations between their emotion socialization practices and relational representations. Complementing these analyses, qualitative narrative interviews with an independent teacher sample explored how educators described their emotional expressiveness, emotion-related practices, and perceived relationships with students. Informed by emotion socialization theory, attachment theory, and the prosocial classroom model, findings highlight the interplay of teachers’ emotional beliefs, regulation, and relational schemas in shaping classroom climate. Our integration of quantitative and qualitative insights provides a more comprehensive understanding of teachers’ emotional functioning and underscores the importance of supporting educators’ relational and emotional competencies to enhance classroom quality and student well-being
Coaching · Cognition · Early childhood · Early childhood education · Emotional expression · Narrative · Prosocial behavior · Socialization · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Early Childhood Education and Development
Early Childhood Teachers’ Well-Being, Mindfulness, and Self-Compassion in Relation to Classroom Quality and Attitudes Towards Challenging Students
Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families
The Bowlby-Ainsworth attachment theory
Early Childhood Teachers as Socializers of Young Children’s Emotional Competence
Teachers’ Social–Emotional Capacity
Post-hoc Probing of Significant Moderational and Mediational Effects in Studies of Pediatric Populations
Achieving Integration in Mixed Methods Designs—Principles and Practices
Early Teacher–Child Relationships and the Trajectory of Children's School Outcomes through Eighth Grade
The Prosocial Classroom
Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1
Parental Socialization of Emotion
Using a drawing method to investigate pre-service teachers’ beliefs, knowledge and emotions about mathematics teaching and learning
Teacher–Child Relationships and Perceived Stress Among Head Start Teachers
Promoting Preschoolers’ Social and Emotional Competencies Through Emotion-Focused Teaching
Teachers’ Emotional Expressiveness and Coping Reactions to Students’ Emotions
Students’ and teachers’ emotions in the classroom
The effects of teacher–child racial congruence, child race, and emotion situation knowledge on teacher–child relationships and school readiness
Teachers' emotional expressiveness and classroom management practices
Practitioner Review
Emotional Competence of Early Childhood Educators and Child Socio-Emotional Wellbeing
Early Teacher–Child Relationships Promote Self-Regulation Development in Prekindergarten
Social representations of teachership based on cover images of Finnish teacher magazine
Social representations of teachership based on students’ and teachers’ drawings of a typical teacher
One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis
The contribution of emotion knowledge, language ability, and maternal emotion socialization style to explaining toddlers’ emotion regulation
Maternal Emotional Styles and Child Social Adjustment
The Draw‐An‐Environment Test Rubric (Daet‐R)
Behavioral exchanges between teachers and children over the course of a typical preschool day
Bidirectional relations among executive function, teacher–child relationships, and early reading and math achievement
Longitudinal associations among teacher–child relationship quality, behavioral engagement, and academic achievement
Children's drawings provide a new perspective on teacher–child relationship quality and school adjustment
Children's task persistence in first grade
Understanding associations between perceptions of student behaviour, conflict representations in the teacher-student relationship and teachers’ emotional experiences
Partial, conditional, and moderated moderated mediation
Caregivers’ emotional competence and behavioral responsiveness as correlates of early childcare workers’ relationships with children in their care
Parental Contributions to Preschoolers' Understanding of Emotion
Richard A. Fabes, Department of Family & Human Development, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2502 (E-mail
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Teacher-student relationships
Exploring the role of early childhood educators’ emotion socialization strategies in the development of young children’s social and non-social play behaviors
Family socialization of emotional expression and nonverbal communication styles and skills
When closeness is effortful
The Roles of Teacher Expectations and School Composition on Teacher-Child Relationship Quality
How Many Interviews Are Enough
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |