Teacher-Child Interactions in Preschool and Task Persistence

This study was designed to investigate specific aspects of preschool teacher-child interactions as they relate to task persistence in classroom vs. laboratory settings. It was hypothesized that teacher’s criticism and interference would be associated with low task behavior in children, and that reward would be associated with high task behavior in both the classroom and an experimental setting; and that the children’s task behavior in the two settings would be correlated. The procedure involved observation of teacher and antecedent child behavior in four Montessori classrooms for 8 days; timed observations of percent of time each child spent on-task in the classroom; and an experimental task, given individually outside the classroom. The results confirm all hypothesized relationships except that between reward in the classroom with persistence on the experimental task.