The role of teachers' perceived control and children's characteristics in interactions between 6-year-olds and their teachers

The study aimed at an understanding of child-teacher interactions in school preparatory classrooms. Relations between observed interactions and sex of the child, teachers' ratings of their perceived control, and of children's undercontrolled and overcontrolled problem behaviors, social competence and work efficiency were studied. Thirty-six teachers and 92 six-year-olds, 39 girls and 53 boys, from 19 classrooms were directly observed on 2-5 occasions during a total mean of 60 minutes per child. The results showed that interactions involving teacher support behaviors were the most common, but comparatively less well explained by the predictors. Associations were found between perceived control and two types of teacher command interactions. For teacher commands initiated by child externalizing behavior, the relation with perceived control was shown to hold for boys only. Male sex and rated undercontrolled problems were predictive of more interactions initiated with externalizing behaviors and also of more restrictive teacher responses following child positive behaviors. Overcontrolled children, who had teachers high in perceived control, were more often met with support behavior when they were off-task. It was concluded that teacher perceptions of control and of child behaviors as well as sex of the child contribute to ongoing processes in preschool classrooms and that the chosen methodology could be used to further the search for factors affecting interactions in preschool settings.