Child and teacher reports of teacher–student relationships: Concordance of perspectives and associations with school adjustment in urban kindergarten classrooms

This investigation examines child and teacher perceptions of teacher–child relationships among 157 children (M age = 6.1) who attended 12 full-day kindergarten classrooms in a large urban school district. Children and teachers completed comparable assessments designed to measure perceptions of social support from teachers and they also completed comparable measures of school adjustment. Findings indicated that some aspects of children's reports of their relationships were reliable but their reports of some dimensions of support had low internal consistency. There was minimal concordance between child and teacher reports of teacher–student relationships suggesting that rater perceptions differed. Analyses of associations between children's and teachers' perceptions of support and their reports of school adjustment indicated stronger within-rater associations than cross-rater associations. Lastly, analyses of demographic variables indicated that student race as well as teacher–student ethnic match was related to teacher but not to student perceptions of teacher–student relationship quality. The implications of these findings for research and practice efforts are discussed.