Representations of social behaviors of children's with different patterns of attachment to the kindergarten teacher in their drawings

• Main Author: Zlatka Cugmas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Slovenian Psychologists' Association 2003-06-01
• Series: Psihološka Obzorja
• Subjects: pre-school children; attachment to kindergarten teacher; social behavior; drawing
• Online Access: http://psiholoska-obzorja.si/arhiv_clanki/2003_2/cugmas.pdf

In the theoretical part of the paper the author gives answers to the questions, whether a real attachment relationship can exist between a child and a nonmaternal caretaker. If exists, is there a relationship between the child-teacher attachment and the child's socioemotional functioning. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between different types of children's attachment to their kindergarten teachers (secure, anxious) and their social behaviors and how children's social behaviors and attachment to the kindergarten teachers represent in their drawings titled Myself in the kindergarten.Twenty-two kindergarten teachers participated in the evaluation of 95 children (50.5 % boys). Children ranged in age from 3 to 6 years. Teachers completed the Questionnaire about children's social behavior - SV-O (LaFreniere, Dumas, Zupančič, Gril & Kavčič, 2001), types of attachment were determined on the basis of the evaluations the teachers gave on the revised version of the AQS (Howes and Smith, 1995) and The evaluation scale of the child's behavior toward pre-school teacher, the CBPT (Cugmas, 2000). The children received the instructions to draw themselves in the kindergarten, their kindergarten teacher, a coeval, and a toy. The results confirmed the hypotheses that the children's relationships with kindergarten teachers characterized by security are related to child competence behaviors and positive adjustment in the kindergarten. Differences in drawing symbols were found to reflect the quality of children's relationships toward their teachers and their social behaviors.