The Half-Truth of Relation-Based Teaching
The universal biopsychological growth and community identity are essential components of high-quality preschool and primary programs.— Barbara T. Bowman
Caring or relation‐based teaching leans on the understanding that all aspects of in‐school development and learning are enhanced when children feel recognized and cared for by their teachers. For Bowman, classroom pragmatics in relation‐based teaching necessarily include an atmosphere of“ warmth and love... all day, all the time.” For example, the infant‐toddler teacher, acting like a family member, practices the physical intimacy very young children need when the teacher“[ e ] njoys the baby up against the body [ and ] holds, hugs, pats, stimulates, and talks as a matter of course”( personal communication, 2022). Caring is also present when teachers support toileting, sleeping, and eating in the classroom. Or when they help children through hand‐over‐hand physical experiences, such as moving puzzle pieces, holding a pencil, shoe tying, assisting with putting on and taking off winter clothing, and climbing playground equipment.
Just as importantly, relation‐based teaching sets the stage to enhance( or deprive) children’ s cognitive development in school, as evidenced by teachers investing in and nurturing the academic achievement of all children, including Black and Brown children and children from families with low incomes.( Academic learning and success is one of the three principles of Ladson-Billings’ s [ 1995 ] widely acclaimed model of culturally responsive pedagogy.) Stressing the need for developmental harmony in the early childhood curriculum, Bowman insisted,“ All [ physical, social, and cognitive care ] must be present in the early childhood curriculum... The universal bio‐psychological growth and community identity are essential components of high‐quality preschool and primary programs”( personal communication, 2022; emphasis mine).
But teachers’ embodiment of the relation‐based teaching model is undermined— becomes a half‐truth— for Bowman when teachers implicitly or explicitly demonstrate they do not value the family / community contexts of Black and Brown children and children from families with low incomes that influence their physical, psychosocial, and cognitive development— contexts that clash with White, Western, and middle‐class expectations of home and community life. Misunderstanding development in these contexts, she avowed, leads some teachers to question parents’ attachment to or their educational aspirations for their children( personal communication, 2022). This happens even at the infant and toddler level, when teachers’ preconceived ideas about parenting may lead to negative judgments of families who choose bottle feeding and parent‐regulated early toilet training. A lack of frequent book reading in the home across the early years is another common source of teacher criticism. Whether families’ choices are driven by personal preference, time, money, or cultural practice was of no consequence to Bowman. Families have their reasons, she maintained. The problem is when teacher biases destabilize families’ confidence in both their parenting and identity communities, making it more difficult for them to be supportive of their children’ s education.
Exacerbating the gap between family / community contexts and relation‐based teaching is that expectations of parenting, teaching, and learning change with trends and times. One that Bowman( 1990, 1998) predicted long before her contemporaries is the use and influence of technology on content area learning, particularly as children transition from early childhood to
42 Young Children
Spring 2026