Student sex and behavior as determinants of the type and frequency of teacher-student contacts

Second-grade teachers ranked their students according to the extent to which they exhibited problem behavior in the classroom. Boys and girls who exhibited few problem behaviors and children who exhibited many problem behaviors were observed in their dyadic interaction with their teacher. Boys who were behavior problems were found to interact with their teachers significantly more than boys who were not behavior problems and more than girls regardless of their classroom behavior. This result indicates that the high rate of student-teacher interaction for boys found by other investigators is probably characteristic of only a small percentage of boys.