Children’s drawings of student-teacher relationship quality: examining change over the first year of school.

The relationships students form with their teachers are critical to children's early school adjustment and later success. While previous research has relied on teachers' single-point ratings of the student-teacher relationship quality (STR), this study included data provided by children and teachers at two-time points in the kindergarten year. Children's drawings of themselves and their teachers were coded using Fury, Carlson, and Sroufe's (1997) attachment-based scoring of relational negativity. Results showed that relational negativity at the start of school aligned with teachers' STR ratings, but children's and teachers' ratings had diverged by the end of the year. Children were twice as likely as teachers to express increased negativity. Possible explanations for different perceptions of STR are proposed.