Student-teacher relationship representation and school adjustment in primary school

The present study investigates student-teacher and student-peer relation-ships, as well as school adjustment. A novelty element is the use of drawing ofoneself with a teacher to predict some aspects of children’s adjustment in prima-ry school. Our aim was to evaluate what aspects of student-teacher relationshipas perceived by children were more predictive of relational wellbeing in classand school adjustment. In sum, our results confirm that, as predicted by the at-tachment theory (Hamre & Pianta, 2001), a relationship perceived as close bythe teacher goes hand in hand with school adjustment and relational wellbeingin school. Autonomy, too, play a positive role. In terms of predictive power,gaining autonomy from teachers seems to predict students wellbeing even morethan closeness, at least as it appears from students pictorial representation.