Teachers’ Representations of Their Relationships with Students: Associations with Their Emotional Expressiveness and Emotion Socialization Practices in the Context of Early Childhood Education

Positive teacher–student relationships in early childhood predict stronger academic and social–emotional outcomes, whereas conflictual or dependent relationships contribute to children’s stress and behavioral and academic difficulties. While prior research emphasizes teachers’ observable relational behaviors, fewer studies explore the internal emotional and cognitive processes that shape these relationships. This mixed-methods study examined how preschool teachers’ emotion socialization practices (i.e., emotion coaching and dismissing) and their classroom expressions of positive and negative emotions relate to their mental representations of their relationships with students. Quantitative analyses tested whether teachers’ emotional expressiveness moderated associations between their emotion socialization practices and relational representations. Complementing these analyses, qualitative narrative interviews with an independent teacher sample explored how educators described their emotional expressiveness, emotion-related practices, and perceived relationships with students. Informed by emotion socialization theory, attachment theory, and the prosocial classroom model, findings highlight the interplay of teachers’ emotional beliefs, regulation, and relational schemas in shaping classroom climate. Our integration of quantitative and qualitative insights provides a more comprehensive understanding of teachers’ emotional functioning and underscores the importance of supporting educators’ relational and emotional competencies to enhance classroom quality and student well-being.