Children’s individual characteristics, such as temperament, play an important role in a successful transition to school. Temperament’s role has been found to be important especially in skill development, but it has also been suggested that the association between children’s temperamental characteristics and their further success in school might, actually, be related to the interaction between teacher and student (Viljaranta et al., 2015). Previous research has shown that students’ temperament is associated with the quality of teacher-student interaction (Curby et al., 2011), and that it evokes certain kinds of instruction and other educational responses among teachers (Coplan & Prakash, 2003; Keogh, 1986). However, not much is known about the relations between temperament and teacher-student interaction in the very beginning of students’ schooling.  Based on previous studies showing that certain temperamental characteristics are perceived as more acceptable than others by teachers (e.g. Martin, 1989), it is possible that students’ temperament plays a crucial role in the way how teacher-student interaction starts to form during the first grade. For example, when students are showing more acceptable characteristics, teacher-student interaction is more likely to be adaptive than when students are showing more difficult or demanding characteristics.

In this study we aimed to examine, first, whether students’ temperamental characteristics are related to the ways how teachers and students interact with each other and, second, whether students’ temperamental characteristics are related to the variation in daily interaction between teachers and students. The study is carried out in Finland. 

Altogether 153 children starting their first school year, as well as their classroom teachers, participated a study where students’ temperament was measured in the beginning of the school year, and the interaction between teacher and student was measured with daily diaries during one school week in the Fall term and one school week during the Spring term. Each child’s temperament was rated by his or her teacher by using four scales from the Temperament Assessment Battery for Children–Revised (TABC–R; Martin & Bridger, 1999) and two scales from the Revised Dimensions of Temperament Survey (DOTS–R; Windle & Lerner, 1986). Based on an exploratory factor analysis of the teacher’s report, four composite scores for children’s teacher-rated temperament were created: (a) low task orientation, (b) inhibition, (c) positive mood, and (d) negative emotionality. Teacher-student interaction was assessed using structured daily diary questionnaires, filled in across 5 school days in Fall and 5 school days in Spring. The scales for teacher-student interaction included affection, behavioral control, and psychological control (developed based on the Finnish version of Blocks’ Child Rearing Practices Report CRPR; see Aunola & Nurmi, 2004). A random-coefficient multilevel regression modelling was used to examine whether students’ temperamental characteristics were related to (1) the level of and (2) variation in teachers’ daily affection, psychological control, or behavioral control. Each temperamental characteristic was analysed in a separate model. In the analyses, child’s gender, his or her skills in reading and math in the beginning of school, and teacher’s work experience were controlled for.

The results from the Fall term showed that students’ characteristics were mostly related to the level of different types of interaction. The more positive mood and inhibition the student showed, the more teacher reported using affection in their interaction with the student. In addition, the lower the task orientation level and the more negative emotionality the student showed, the more behavioral and psychological control the teacher reported using. The results showed, also, that students’ low task orientation was related not only to the level but also to the variation in teachers’ daily behavioral control. The results concerning the Spring term were somewhat different. The more positive mood the student showed, the less teacher reported using psychological control in their interaction with the student, and the lower task orientation level and the more inhibition the student showed, the more behavioral control the teacher reported using. In addition, the more the student showed negative emotionality, the more teacher reported using affection, psychological control, and behavioral control in their interaction with the student. In the Spring term students’ temperamental characteristics were not related to the daily variation in teacher-student interaction. The findings indicate, in general, that temperamental characteristics that could be seen as more challenging in the classroom environment were related to teachers’ reports of using psychological and behavioral control in their interaction with the students. Understanding derived from these findings could help teachers to modify their interaction styles to be more in line with children’s style of behavior and reactivity (Rothbart & Jones, 1998): if the teacher can adaptively acknowledge children’s individual needs in learning situations and change his or her behavior according to the children’s individual needs, this may help children to overcome the possible difficulties in school work caused by their temperamental characteristics (see, e.g., Landry et al., 2008).

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