Student-teacher conflict moderates

self-regulation – social skills relation

for girls but not boys
Introduction
What is does it mean to experience success in school?

Is achievement all that is important?

Introduction
• Cognitive Self-Regulation
• “Umbrella term”
• Conceptual overlap with:
• Executive Functioning
• Effortful Control
• Executive Control

• Social Competence
• Prosocial behavior (e.g., sharing, cooperation)
• Social cognition (e.g., social problem-solving)
• Creating and maintaining positive relationships
Introduction
• The interaction of nature and nurture…

• Wealth of developmental knowledge on the

importance of parental influence…

…But how much do we know about

the role teachers have?
Research Questions
• What is the association between cognitive self-
regulation and later social competence in young
children?

• Does the conflict in the student-teacher

relationship impact this association?
• If so, how?

• What role, if any, does child gender factor into this

connection?
Method
• Participants
• 11,074 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study – Kindergarten Class of 2011

• Measures
• Dimensional Change Card Sort (Zelazo, 2006)
• Combined Score (CSR)
• Social Skills Rating System (NCS Pearson, 1990)
• Interpersonal Skills (IP)
• Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta, 2001)
• Conflict subscale (STR)
Data Analytic Plan
• Timing of Data Selection
• CSR at T1 (Kindergarten fall)
• STR at T2 (Kindergarten spring)
• IPS at T4 (First Grade spring)
• Child Age (in months) at T2 (covariate)

• Regression analyses
• PROCESS (Hayes, 2013)
• Model 3 (Moderation)
• Inclusion of bootstrapped confidence intervals
Results

• Outcome: Interpersonal Skills

• Main effects:
• CSR (+)
The higher the gender, the
• Conflict (-) better the interpersonal
• Gender (+) skills?

• Interactions:
• CSRxConflictxGender (+)

• R2 = .20
Figure 1:
Plotting
of Simple
Slopes
 0

y = 0.0253x - 0.1511
-0.1

Interpersonal Skills at T4
Figure 2: -0.2
High (+1SD)
Student-Teacher y = 0.017x - 0.3444
-0.3
Conflict
-0.4

-0.5
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4

Cognitive Flexibility at T1
Male Female
Discussion
• Children’s cognitive self-regulatory ability
significantly predicted future interpersonal skills

• Conflict, alone, did not moderate the CSR-IP

association

• Differential impact of the student-teacher

relationship on CSRIP association:
• For boys: lower conflict = greater effect of CSR on IP
• For girls: greater conflict = greater effect of CSR on IP
Conclusions & Future Directions
So what does this mean?

“Conflict in the student-teacher relationship is great

for girls!”
…definitely sends the wrong message

Individual differences in teachers?

Contextual differences between kindergarten and

first grade
Questions or Comments?
Acknowledgements
• Research Team
• Caitlin Jayne
• Caitlin Johnson
• Corey Johnson
• Amanda Miller
• Beth Rachlin

• Special thanks to:

• Alexandra Zelin, Ph.D.
• Susanne A. Denham, Ph.D.
Contact information
Thank You!

For more information, contact:

Dr. David E. Ferrier
615 McCallie Ave., Dept. 2803
Chattanooga, TN 37403
David-Ferrier@utc.edu
David-Ferrier@utc.edu