The quality of the relationship children have with their teachers is strongly predictive of their social and academic adjustment at school. Children who have closer relationships to their teachers, with less conflict, tend to have better attitudes to school, fewer social problems and better language and maths skills.

However, to date, teacher-child relationships have largely be measured using teacher ratings scales (such as the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale), which causes certain problems for research and assessment. For example, it's usually the same teacher who provides the assessment of their relationship with a given child and also assesses that child's adjustment at school, thus confounding the data. It also means the child's perspective is neglected.

To overcome these limitations, Linda Harrison (Charles Stuart University, Australia) and colleagues have investigated the use of children's drawings as a measure of teacher-child relationships. Children's drawings of themselves and their families are already used widely to investigate family relationship quality.

One hundred and twenty-three children were provided with a blank piece of A4 paper and 12 felt-tip pens, and invited to "Draw a picture of you and your teacher at school". The drawings were coded using a system developed by Fury et al (1997) for use in a family context. This involves assessing the drawings along seven dimensions, including: 'Emotional Distance/ Isolation', as indicated by greater physical distance between the teacher and child; 'Bizarreness/ Dissociation', as indicated by the use of unusual signs and symbols; and 'Pride/ Happiness', revealed for example by the child and teacher drawn holding hands.

As well as completing the drawing task, the children also answered three questions about their relationship with their teacher (including "Does your teacher smile at you?"), and the relevant teachers also completed the 30-item Student-Teacher-Relationship Scale (including items such as "This child and I always seem to be struggling with each other").

The children's drawings were found to be specific, in that they tapped teacher-child relationship quality rather than broader aspects of school life, and also valid, in that a composite score derived from the drawings correlated with the teachers' ratings. In fact the drawings were more strongly related to the teachers' ratings than the scores derived from the children's self-report.

Consistent with previous research, the children's relationships with their teachers (as revealed by their drawings) were also related to their adjustment at school, accounting for 9 per cent of variance in classroom strengths and competencies, and 14.9 per cent of variance in teacher-rated problem behaviour in class.

Writing in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Harrison and colleagues concluded: "Our work shows that children's representations of their relationships with teachers in their drawings can provide a meaningful tool for assessing the emotional quality of the relationship".

They added: "It is possible that our representational measure enabled a wider range of emotions to be assessed. The expression of emotions, particularly negative or difficult emotions, may be managed more easily through drawing than by directly voicing these feelings".

However, the findings also came with a word of caution. The drawings were coded by trained observers with extensive experience of attachment theory and clinical work with children. The researchers said it was possible clinicians seeking to apply this approach more widely could struggle with the fine detail of the coding system. On an optimistic note, naïve observers have been successfully trained to interpret children's drawings in the context of family relationships.

Harrison, L.J., Clarke, L. & Ungerer, J.A. (2007). Children's drawings provide a new perspective on teacher-child relationship quality and school adjustment. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22, 55-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2006.10.003

Fury, G., Carlson, E.A. & Sroufe, L.A. (1997). Children's representations of attachment relationships in family drawings. Child Development, 68, 1154-1164. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1132298

The Student Teacher Relationship Scale:  Pianta, R. C. (2001). STRS student-teacher relationship scale: professional manual. Lutz, FL, Psychological Assessment Resources.