Student-teacher relationships in elementary school: The unique role of shyness, anxiety, and emotional problems

This study explored the unique contributions of students' self-reported internalizing behaviors (shyness, anxiety, and emotional problems) to teachers' perceptions of the quality of student-teacher relationships (closeness, conflict, and dependency). In total, 269 third-to-sixth grade students (50.9% girls) and 35 teachers (74.7% females) from 8 Dutch regular elementary schools participated in this study. Teachers filled out questionnaires about their background characteristics and the affective quality of their relationship with individual students, and students answered questions about their demographics and internalizing behaviors. Multilevel models revealed significant negative associations of student-perceived shyness with teacher-perceived closeness and conflict in the student-teacher relationship. Additionally, students' anxiety was positively associated with conflict and dependency in the relationship. Students' emotional problems, however, were not associated with student-teacher relationship quality. These findings suggest that different types of internalizing student behavior may play a differential role in the quality of the student-teacher relationship.