Teacher decisions are largely influenced by the judgments that they make regarding their students' states of mind. Thus, it is important for teachers to be accurate in their judgments. The current study investigated the teacher judgment accuracy of student perceptions of the teacher-student relationship. In a Western state of the United States, 40 teachers used a prediction form to predict how their 4th "“ 6th grade students would rate the closeness and the conflict of their teacher-student relationship via the Student Perception of Affective Relationship with Teacher Scale (SPARTS, Koomen & Jellesma, 2015). Students then took the survey, and teacher predictions and student reports were run through bivariate correlations and t-tests for analysis. Teacher predictions and student reports had a mean correlation coefficient of .31 for closeness and .39 for conflict. Nine of the 40 teachers had a negative correlation for closeness, conflict, or both, suggesting that a good percentage of teachers are fairly poor at judging how their students perceive their teacher-student relationship. Nonetheless, the t-tests confirmed that on average, teacher judgment accuracy was significantly better than random. The results of this study suggest that there is a need for intervention to help teachers become more accurate judges of how their students perceive the teacher-student relationship. As teacher judgments impact teacher decisions, accurate judgments of the student perceptions of the relationship might allow for teachers to make decisions that would more effectively nurture positive teacher-student relationships.

Given that children who have academic and/or mental health issues exhibit underachievement, measures completed by teachers become a primary source of information for school psychologists (DuPaul & Stoner, 2003; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Sherman, Rasmussen, & Baydala, 2008). However, teacher measures have been called into question because of the discrepancies between teacher academic ratings and student scores on direct (Feinberg & Shapiro, 2009; Hamilton & Shinn, 2003) and norm referenced measures (Eaves et al., 1994). The objective of this study was to examine the validity of the Academic Competence Evaluation Scales (ACES; DiPerna & Elliott, 1999), a teacher academic measure, used on a Latino population referred for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Further, the current study explored whether teachers' ratings of their Latino students' academic competence were related to the parents' acculturation and/or students' characteristics, such as language proficiency, grade retenti / School Psychology

La vision illusoire de soi positive (surestimation de soi) semble inhérente à la cognition humaine et fluctue dans son intensité en fonction de l’âge et du degré d’abstraction du concept évalué. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux illusions positives, mais aussi négatives, des perceptions que les enfants âgés de 8 à 11 ans ont vis-à-vis de leur compétence scolaire. Ces illusions sont mesurées à partir de l’écart entre les performances scolaires effectives des élèves d’une part et la perception qu’ils ont de leur compétence scolaire d’autre part. Le biais d’auto-évaluation de compétence scolaire, locution utilisée pour faire référence à cet écart positif ou négatif, a été étudié jusqu’alors en considérant les habiletés générales des élèves à l’école (voir Bouffard, Pansu & Boissicat, 2013). Dans cette thèse, le biais est abordé au niveau de matières spécifiques : le français et les mathématiques. L’objectif général est d’appréhender les liens entre les auto-évaluations biaisées de compétence, l’adaptation et la réussite scolaire des élèves dans ces deux disciplines. A un niveau individuel, un suivi longitudinal d’élèves de primaire (N = 677) sur trois années a permis dans une première étude de définir quatre trajectoires développementales du biais d’auto-évaluation : trois trajectoires assez stables, une positive, une modérée, une négative, ainsi qu’une quatrième évoluant d’un biais très négatif à un biais relativement modéré. Après avoir examiné les liens entre ces trajectoires et un ensemble de mesures liées à l’adaptation scolaire de l’élève, nous avons appréhendé dans une seconde étude l’autorégulation et la performance scolaire des élèves en fonction de leur auto-évaluation biaisée. La mise en lumière des liens entre le biais d’auto-évaluation, l’adaptation et le fonctionnement des élèves a permis de rendre compte du caractère plus ou moins délétère du biais selon qu’il soit positif ou négatif. A un niveau interindividuel, une troisième étude a porté sur le lien entre le biais d’auto-évaluation de compétence des élèves et le jugement de leur enseignant. Enfin, une dernière étude a examiné la capacité des enseignants à repérer les auto-évaluations biaisées chez leurs élèves. Si les enseignants jugent mieux les élèves surestimant leur compétence, les résultats de la dernière étude laissent à penser que ce processus est inconscient. / The illusive positive view of the self (overestimation of the self) seems inherent to human cognition. This illusion fluctuates in its intensity according to the age and degree of abstraction of the concept evaluated. In this thesis, we are interested in the positive or negative illusions of self-perceptions among elementary school student aged from 8 to 11. We put the focus in this thesis on the difference between a student's academic skills, measured by standardized tests, and the student’s self-evaluation of his competence. The self-evaluation bias of school competency refer to this gap studied so far by considering the general abilities of the students (see Bouffard, Pansu & Boissicat, 2013). In this thesis, the bias is approached in specific domains: in French and in mathematics. The overall goal is to understand the links between biased self-assessments of competency, student adjustments and academic achievements in these two disciplines. At an individual level, a three-year longitudinal follow-up study of third elementary grade to fifth grade students (N = 677) allowed to define four developmental trajectories of the self-evaluation bias: three fairly stable trajectories, one positive, one neutral, one negative, and the last trajectory evolving from a very negative bias to a positive one. We examined then the links between these trajectories and scholastic adjustment measures. Considering these results, in a second study we examined the self-regulation and academic performance of students according to their biased self-evaluation. The highlight of links between self-evaluation bias and students’ adjustment were relevant to account for detrimental or beneficial nature of the bias, according to its valence. At an inter-individual level, we were interested in a third study on the link between student self-assessment bias and the judgment of their teacher. At last, in a final study, we assessed the ability of teachers to identify self-biased evaluation in their students. In the case of teachers appraising students who overestimate their competence, the results of the last study conducted on this students two years later suggest that this process is unconscious.