Teacher-Child Relationships, Social-Emotional Development, and Academic Engagement

Positive teacher-child relationships are key factors for children’s social-emotional development and academic success in schools. Teachers’ ability to provide children with emotional support and understand children’s unique needs may improve challenging behaviors in the classroom. Play-based teacher intervention training models provide teachers opportunities to become therapeutic agents and learn how to use humanistic play therapy skills and language to communicate with children and respond to their unique needs. In this chapter, the authors introduce four play-based teacher intervention training models: Kinder Training, Child-Teacher Relationship Training, Relationship Enhancement for Learner and Teacher, and Teacher-Child Relationship Building. The authors also illustrate these models’ goals, training structure, research support for their effectiveness with teacher-child relationships, children’s behavioral issues, academic engagement, and teachers’ classroom management skills.