Socioeconomic inequalities in teacher-student relationships at age 5

Teacher-student relationship quality has been found to be important for a range of educational outcomes. It appears to be associated with student socioeconomic background, but little is known about the processes driving socioeconomic inequalities in teacher-student relationships. In this paper we draw on cultural reproduction theory to suggest three mechanisms linking student socioeconomic background with teacher-student relationship quality: student behaviour; parental interest and involvement; and student unpreparedness for school. We use data from Cohort ‘08 of Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) on 5-year-old children to assess socioeconomic inequalities in teacher-student conflict and closeness, and the extent to which these can be explained by the three mechanisms. As expected, we find that children with parents from the working class and with no jobs have less close and more conflictual relationships with their teachers than students whose parents are from the managerial and professional classes. All three mechanisms appear to be contributing to these inequalities with student behaviour having the relatively smallest mediating effect and only parental interest (rather than involvement) being relevant. Our findings suggest ways of mitigating inequalities in teacher-student relationships and, hence, closing social gaps in early school outcomes.