Associations between Teachers' Interpersonal Behavior and Students' Socio-Emotional Learning Skills in Social Sciences Classrooms in Turkey

Associations between students' socio-emotional learning skills and students' perceptions about their social sciences teachers' interpersonal behavior were investigated in this study. A primary level version of the "Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction" (QTI) was adapted into Turkish in order to gather the data concerning teacher interpersonal behaviors in the Turkish elementary classrooms. This process together with the collection of data concerning students' socio-emotional learning skills was performed in several state elementary schools with 386 students from Grade 5 and Grade 6. Descriptive statistics, Canonical Correlation Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (with Mplus) were utilized for the purposes of data analyses. The results revealed that the Turkish version of the QTI for primary schools demonstrated a reasonable fit with the data with some minor deviations. The results also indicated that students' perceptions about their teachers' leadership, helpful, uncertain and understanding behaviors were positively but admonishing, dissatisfied and strict behaviors were negatively related to students' socio-emotional learning skills.