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Improving Teacher-Child Relationship Quality and Teacher-Rated Behavioral Adjustment Amongst Externalizing Preschoolers: Effects of a Two-Component Intervention

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Abstract

The school-based Playing-2-gether is a 12-week intervention with two components aimed at decreasing child externalizing behavior through improving teacher-child interactions. The first component is rooted in attachment theory and aimed at enhancing teacher-child relationship quality, and the second is based on learning theory and aimed at improving teachers’ behavior management. In this three-wave randomized study, effects of Playing-2-gether on the teacher-child relationship quality and on teacher-rated child behavioral adjustment were investigated. To this aim, 175 dyads consisting of male preschoolers with relatively high levels of externalizing problem behavior and their teachers were randomly assigned to Playing-2-gether (n = 89) or an education-as-usual control condition (n = 86). Teacher-rated questionnaires were collected at pre-test, after the first intervention component, and at post-test. At post-test, the intervention group showed a larger decrease in teacher-child conflict, child conduct problems, and child hyperactivity/inattention. Supplementary analyses showed that all positive effects were already visible after the first intervention component and that teacher-child conflict, child conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention did not further reduce during the second component. In addition, an increase in closeness was found following the first component, but subsequently disappeared at post-test.

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Notes

  1. The total number of participating children (N = 175) was chosen based on simple prior power calculations, showing that when using a between-subject design when comparing two mean score levels at a 0.05 significance level, 175 students are sufficient to have a high robability to detect a small to moderate effect (power > 0.80 for d = 0.40).

  2. The exclusion criteria for child participation in the intervention were: (a) a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, (b) a suspicion of autism spectrum disorder as judged by the child’s teacher and/or parent (s), and/or (c) being enrolled at a similar intervention for behavioral or emotional problems at the time of the screening.

  3. The subscale hyperactivity/inattention may be considered as a hybrid scale and not a pure measure of EPB, as it consists of items referring to both hyperactivity and attention. Therefore, we deleted the item of the SDQ which refers the most to inattention (“Easily distracted, concentration wanders”), and we conducted the main analyses in the paper with the four remaining items of this “pure” measure of hyperactivity. The results of the analyses with and without this inattention item were similar. Therefore, in this manuscript, we report on the results with the original hyperactivity/inattention scale. The output of these analyses is available on request.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a grant of the Research Fund of the KU Leuven, Belgium (OT/09/019). The authors thank teachers and consultants for their help with intervention implementation and assistant researchers for their help with data collection.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Unit School Psychology and Child and Adolescent Development (SCAD) at KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Box 3717, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Caroline Vancraeyveldt, Caroline Vancraeyveldt, Karine Verschueren, Sofie Wouters, Sanne Van Craeyevelt & Hilde Colpin

  2. Research Unit Methodology of Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Wim Van den Noortgate

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  1. Caroline Vancraeyveldt
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Vancraeyveldt, C., Verschueren, K., Wouters, S. et al. Improving Teacher-Child Relationship Quality and Teacher-Rated Behavioral Adjustment Amongst Externalizing Preschoolers: Effects of a Two-Component Intervention. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 243–257 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-014-9892-7

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