Attachment in the classroom

Inovacije u nastavi, 2015

The purpose of this study was to find out how are the quality of student-teacher interaction and teachers' practices related with school achievement during the primary education. A sample of 366 students attending 4 th and 7 th grades from Belgrade primary schools participated in the study. We developed a questionnaire measuring seven dimensions of student-teacher attachment (Proximity seeking, Separation protest, Particularity, Safe haven, Secure base, Open communication, and Closeness), and six dimensions of teacher practices (Strict, Leadership, Instructional support, Helping/friendly, Conflict, and Dissatisfaction). The parallel versions of questionnaire, for class teacher in 4 th grade, and Math teacher in 7 th grade were developed. Based on exploratory factor analysis these dimensions were reduced on fewer number of factors. As educational outcomes, we measured students attitude towards school and learning and school marks. Factors Attachment to teacher, Instructional support, Positive emotional relationship with students, students' Positive attitudes towards school and learning and school marks were taken for structural equation modeling, for each grade separately. Results show that Attachment to teacher affects students Attitudes towards school and learning in both grades and school marks just in 4 th grade. In 4 th grade, quality of Instructional support and teachers' Positive relationship with students have effect on students' Attachment and directly, on school marks and students' Attitudes towards school and learning, respectively. In 7 th grade, quality of teachers' Instructional support has effect on Math marks, while teachers' Positive emotional relation with students affects students' Attachment and Math marks. Results are discussed in the light of the attachment to teacher and the quality of student-teacher socio-emotional interaction as factors that foster teaching and learning.

The effective practice of school psychology requires a strong research and theoretical base, a framework that encompasses developmental processes and outcomes, both adaptive and maladaptive, which facilitates assessment and intervention and offers insight into classroom and family dynamics. Attachment theory provides the school psychologist with just such a framework. In the present article we provide a brief overview of attachment theory and describe risk factors for development of insecure attachment. Behavioral trajectories of children and adolescents according to attachment classification are discussed. Finally, student-teacher interactions within an attachment perspective and implications for interventions are presented.

Alipato: A Journal of Basic Education, 2010

Multimodal Technologies and Interaction

Portuguese schools have high student failure and early school leaving rates (Pordata, 2017) giving rise to a number of initiatives aimed at their reduction. The “Alternative Curricular Course” (ACC) promotes the learning of basic skills, specifically in Portuguese language and Mathematics, to support logical reasoning and artistic, vocational, and professional development. Its main goal is the fulfilment of compulsory schooling and the reduction of academic failure. Research based on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) suggests that different internal working models of attachment are associated with different characteristics of social, academic, emotional, and behavioural competencies that may interfere in the quality of relationships that young people establish in school, especially with teachers, and also influence their academic performance. This study evaluates the relationship between internal working models of students, their perceptions of the quality of their relationships with...

Frontiers in Education

Attachment theory has played a prominent role in the study of affective relationships between teachers and individual children in school settings. This review synthesizes three decades of attachment-based research on teacher-child relationships roughly covering the period between 1992 and 2022. Five key themes were discussed: (1) conceptualization and assessment, (2) secure base and autonomous exploration, (3) safe haven and self-regulation, (4) attachment history and relationship (dis)continuity, and (5) teacher sensitivity and mentalization. Following a narrative review approach, a selection of pivotal research studies was made and chronologically presented to illustrate research developments per theme. The results indicated that the conceptualization and assessment of teacher-child relationships holds largely, but not completely, across different developmental phases, cultural contexts, measurement methods, and informants. In addition, research confirmed the role of the secure ba...

The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 2009

The authors investigated how student-student friendships, student-teacher relationships, and attachment styles link to General Educational Development program completion among 127 women and 117 men. Students' relationships with students and instructors, as well as secure attachment style were positively associated with earning a GED. After statistical control for demographic variables, hierarchical logistic regression analyses demonstrated that both student-student friendships and student-instructor relationships positively predicted attachment and subsequent General Educational Development program completion. The overall model, which correctly classified 85.7% of the cases, was statistically reliable in distinguishing between those people who earned GEDs and those who did not. In addition, 2-way analyses of variance revealed that those who had secure attachment styles had better relationships with their fellow students and instructors.

The developmental outcomes of attachment relationships, has been a fundamental part of attachment theory since its inception, nearly 50 years ago. The relationship between attachment, self-esteem and academic achievement in middle childhood (8 -12 years) is examined in this study. Children's internal representations of attachment relationships are assessed through a modified version of the SAT, specifically designed for use in this study.

TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 2018

Attachment is a strong emotional connection that an individual develops against an object or person. Attachment to the school is a basic psychological need in terms of feeling belonging to the group, believing that it is valued and respected as a member of the school. This study was carried out in order to examine the attachment status of high school students in terms of various variables. Relational screening model was used in the research. The study is composed of high school students studying in Niğde. The data of the study were obtained using the Personal Information Form and the Arrow Attachment Scale on the Adolescents and the Parent / Peer Attachment Inventory Short Form. The data were processed into the SPSS package program and the normality test was performed to determine the tests to be used in the study. As a result of the analysis made, it was understood that the data did not show normal distribution, so non-parametric tests were used. Within this scope; Mann Whitney U test for two categorical variables, Kruskal Wallis test for the analysis of variables with three or more categories, and Spearman correlation analysis for the analysis of the effects of variables. As a result of the analysis of the data, it was seen that there was a statistically significant difference between the levels of attachment to the school according to the gender variable, but there was a significant difference in favor of boys in terms of teacher attachment. While there was no significant difference in the attachment to friends sub-dimensions depending gender, it was seen that the average order of men was lower than women. The findings of the study showed that the level of attachment to the school significantly differed according to the level of satisfaction with the school. Accordingly, those who are satisfied with the school have less attachment to the school. Another area of attachment that high school satisfaction affects is the attachment to friends. Those who are satisfied with their high school they are studying are found to have a significantly lower level attachment to friends than those who are not. Satisfaction with school also affects the attachment to the teacher. For those who are satisfied with their school, the total scores of the teacher attachment sub dimension are found to be lower than those who are not satisfied. According to the results obtained in the research, the cohabitation status of the parents does not make a meaningful difference in terms of the attachment of the high school students to the school, friends, and teachers. The grade level influences the attachment to the school; there was a significant difference between the students in the first grade and those in the third grade. On the other hand, this situation doesn't affect the attachment level to the teacher. This result shows that there is a significant positive correlation between the total scores of the mother attachment scale and the total score of school attachment scale in the adolescents. There was a significant positive correlation between total scores of the father attachment scale and total scores of school attachment scale to adolescents.

Frontiers in psychology, 2017

This study was designed to explore whether children's representations of attachment contribute to the co-construction of positive teacher-child relationships. An assessment of verbal intelligence was included as a predictor on the assumption that teachers might perceive themselves as having better relationships with more verbally competent children. Participants were 52 children from two pre-schools, in the district of Lisbon. The Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) was used to assess children's attachment security. The PCV-P (a scale developed in portuguese language) was used to describe teacher-child relationships through teachers' ratings of child secure base behavior and emotion regulation and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-R) was used to access verbal skills. Bivariate correlations showed that the teachers' rating of child secure base behavior was significantly associated with both child attachment security and verbal IQ. In ...

Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 2014

Through an examination of measurement invariance, this study investigated whether attachment-related dimensions (i.e., secure base, safe have, and negative interactions as measured with the NRI-BSV) have the same psychological meaning for early adolescents in their relationships with parents and teachers. Data were gathered for a sample of 297 families with an adolescent in Grade 7 (M age = 11.40; 62% boys). The results indicated that perceived attachment-related dimensions have a similar meaning in parent-child and teacher-child relationships (weak metric invariance), but that no direct comparison of observed means should be made (lack of strong metric invariance). In addition, it seemed that teachers fulfill the function of secure base rather than safe haven in early adolescence.