Preschool-Age Problem Behavior and Teacher-Child Conflict in School: Direct and Moderation Effects by Preschool Organization Child Development, May/June 2015, Volume 86, Number 3, Pages 955-964 Vera Skalicka, NTNU Social Research

The hypothesis was tested that the new open-group Norwegian day care centers would more than traditionally organized centers negatively affect (1) current and (2) future teacher-child relationships, and (3) the developmental legacy of preschool problem behavior. The focus was on 850 four-year olds from 153 centers who were followed-up in first grade. Results of this natural quasi-experiment revealed that children from open-group centers (1) experienced less teacher-child closeness in preschool and (2) more teacher-child conflict in first grade; and (3) that high levels of preschool problem behavior forecast especially high levels of future teacher-child conflict, but only for children from open-group centers. Results highlight the importance of spatial and social organization of day care and their translational implications. PRESCHOOL MODERATES PROBLEM BEHAVIOR-CONFLICT LINK 2 Preschool-age problem behavior and teacher-child conflict in school: direct and moderation effects by preschool organization. One important goal of preschool is to prepare children for school. The transition from preschool to first grade requires children to adjust their behavior according to the new environment and to negotiate new social relationships. The establishment of relationships with new teachers appears particularly important, as their quality forecasts children’s subsequent academic and social development (Sabol & Pianta, 2012). Indeed, negative teacher-child relationships involving high levels of conflict predict limited school engagement, poor academic achievement and problem behavior (Doumen, Verschueren, Buyse, Germeijs, Luyckx, & Soenens, 2008; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Sabol & Pianta, 2012). Relational conflict can be affected by many factors, including children’s own characteristics (Birch & Ladd, 1997), prior relationship experiences (Howes, Phillipsen, & Peisner-Feinberg, 2000) and children`s own behavior (Birch & Ladd, 1998). Evidence indicates, for example, that children with more externalizing problems prior to school entry tend to have more conflict with their teachers than do other children (Birch & Ladd, 1998; Doumen et al., 2008; Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999; Nurmi, 2012; Pianta & Steinberg, 1992). Contextual factors also appear to influence student-teacher relationships (Hamre, Pianta, Downer, & Mashburn, 2008; Mantzicopoulos, 2005; Pianta, 1999). Not only is there evidence that more time spent in child care and more center care predicts more teacher-child conflict in school (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2003), but research also indicates that classroom composition and teaching style can moderate effects of early behavioral problems on later teacher-child relations (Buyse, Verschueren, Doumen, Van Damme, & Maes, 2008; Hamre & Pianta, 2005). Here we seek to extend work on the potential influence of preschool classroom PRESCHOOL MODERATES PROBLEM BEHAVIOR-CONFLICT LINK 3 context on teacher-child conflict in first grade by focusing on the organization of the preschool, taking advantage of a large-scale Norwegian study. Thus, the current work has potential implications for how preschool and child-care settings are organized and thus for translational science. The organization of the preschool is an important issue, given changes taking place in child care centers in Nordic and Central European countries, with a shift from relatively stable groups of children and caregivers, to more open, larger and flexibly changing groups (Kjørholt & Qvortrup, 2011). Conceivably, experience of open-group centers involving a changing mix of children and caregivers across various rooms could undermine teacher-child relationship stability. Drawing on Pianta`s reasoning that stability of teacher-child contact and interactions is essential for developing optimal relationships (Pianta, 1999), it is possible that preschool children in the open-group centers are not able to develop as secure bases with multiple teachers and that they might even develop more conflicted relationships, compared to children from traditional centers. In fact, previous research suggested that children experiencing more caregiver stability in day care establish more secure relationships with their caregiver (Barnas & Cummings, 1994; Raikes, 1993) and show higher levels of social competence (Howes & Hamilton, 1993) and well-being; such effects may well engender higher quality of relationships later on (De Schipper, Van IJzendoorn, & Tavecchio, 2004). According to qualitative interviews with Norwegian teachers, open-group centers generate extra strain due to increased complexity of teacher-teacher, child-teacher, and childchild interactions and organizational tasks, thereby affording less opportunity for provision of emotional support and timely and sensitive response to individual child problem behavior (Seland, 2009). Open-group centers might thus fail to provide individual children with caregivers whose presence would be stable enough to provide children with emotional security and to facilitate development of positive relational styles. In the current study, we PRESCHOOL MODERATES PROBLEM BEHAVIOR-CONFLICT LINK 4 thus aimed to test whether preschool classroom organization, operationalized in terms of open versus more traditional classrooms, would predict future teacher-child relationships. We also tested whether preschool organization would influence children`s functioning in terms of problem behavior, temperamental regulation and social competence. Furthermore, as preschoolers having difficulty regulating their behavior might be particularly susceptible to the hypothesized adverse effects of open-group centers, we investigated whether such classroom organization would also moderate links between preschool problems and conflicted relationships in first grade--by amplifying them for preschoolers already manifesting problems. Open-group Centers in a Norwegian Context In Norway, traditional day-care centers consist of a few separate, stable groups of children and caregivers, each assigned exclusive use of a few rooms. Norway recently started to build large day-care centers, with a much more flexible group organization, in order to fulfill increasing demand for child-care places (Buvik, Brandslet, & Bendiksen, 2005). For example, in years 2006-2008, the municipality of Trondheim (with around 180,000 inhabitants), where the current research was conducted, built 47 new open-group centers (Trondheim municipality, 2013a). In these open-group centers, children belong to a primary group, which has its own, relatively small physical base-area, with all the remaining area defined as common and thus shared with all other children in the center. This organization is based partly on Reggio Emilia philosophy stipulating that the room itself is a “teacher” (Ceppi & Zini, 2001; Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007) and partly on recent trends in Scandinavian pedagogy which regard children as free and competent individuals who can and, therefore, should be enabled, to co-determine their developmental experiences (Brembeck, Johansson, & Kampmann, 2004; Kjørholt, 2001; Seland, 2009). Thus, more so than in traditional centers, children can choose where and how to spend their time. PRESCHOOL MODERATES PROBLEM BEHAVIOR-CONFLICT LINK 5 One consequence of this open-group arrangement is that the child’s social world becomes substantially larger and less stable than in traditional centers, as children interact not only with children and teachers from their own primary group, but also with those from all other such primary groups. In traditionally organized centers, on the other hand, children spend virtually all their time with three or four teachers and a limited and well-defined number of other children. In a recent national survey in Norway, only 12 % of opengroup centers reported that children spent more than 60 % of their time in their primary group, compared to 52 % of traditionally organized centers (Vassenden, Thygesen, Bayer, Alvestad, & Abrahamsen, 2011). In addition, the primary groups in open-group centers tend to be larger than the traditional ones -22.7 vs. 18.8 children, on average (Vassenden et al., 2011). In 39 % of the open-group centers, teachers had to relate to more than 18 children while indoors; this was the case in only 28 % of traditional centers (Vassenden et al., 2011). These findings suggest that the social encounters and experiences of children in open-group centers are more varied and that teachers in these centers might be less able to provide children with individualized attention when in larger groups (despite the same teacher-child ratio 1: 6) as compared to traditional centers. The most important factor determining where a child attends child care in Norway is geographical closeness of the center to child’s home (Barnehage.no, 2012, Trondheim municipality, 2005). In 2005, Trondheim municipality introduced centralized management of placement of all children in all public day-care centers (Trondheim municipality, 2013b). Although parents could indicate their preferences to certain centers, due to overall shortage of child-care places (Trondheim municipality, 2013c), whether and in which day-care center children received a place was not under a family’s direct control. Placement was typically based on the physical proximity of the center to the child’s home and where centers were first PRESCHOOL MODERATES PROBLEM BEHAVIOR-CONFLICT LINK 6 built was not a function of child, family or neighborhood characteristics. Comparison, then, of children who did and did not experience an open-group center makes the work reported herein a natural quasi-experiment.