Classroom Management and Relationships Between Children and Teachers: Implications for Research and Practice

Readers of this volume will no doubt find familiarity with the notion that a large, and perhaps growing, sector of professional practice and training in education has to dowith students’ social interactions and emotional health, based on accrued evidence that socioemotional functioning relates to academic achievement domains as well as well-being (see Battistich, Solomon, Watson, & Schaps, 1997; Brophy & Good, 1974, 1986; Hoagwood & Johnson, 2003; Pianta, 1999). Attention to the school as a social setting and the ways in which classroom and school social structures constrain or support social development have for many years been the focus of discussions related to classroom management-ranging from how to use specific behavior modification techniques to address problem behavior of individual children in the classroom to the restructuring and reorganization of schools to address concerns related to community and forming a homelike setting (Battistich et al., 1997; Felner, Favazza, Shim, & Brand, 2001). Perspectives on social processes in schools draw from diverse literatures concerning teachers’ and students’ expectations of one another, discipline and class management, teaching and learning as socially mediated, teachers’ own self-and efficacy-related feelings and beliefs, school belonging and caring, teacher-student interactions, and themore recent work on teacher support as a source of resilience for children at risk (e.g., Brophy & Good, 1974; Battistich et al., 1997; Eccles & Roeser, 1999; Goodenow, 1992).