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Understanding the Relationship Between Early Elementary Children's ADHD Symptoms and Teachers' Needs Supportive

Melissa Kang¹, Anne-Claude V Bédard¹, Angela Pyle¹

¹University of Toronto, ON, Canada.

Journal of Attention Disorders

|April 15, 2026

Abstract

Objective:

Many children with diagnosed and subclinical ADHD struggle with low academic motivation in early elementary. Fortunately, teachers' needs' supportive practices (NSPs) can mitigate motivational challenges and protect against disengagement and underachievement. Teachers' NSPs include autonomy support, structure, and positive student-teacher relationships that target children's motivational resources (i.e., autonomy, competency, and relatedness) needed to engage with school materials. Particularly, autonomy support practices fuel children's feelings of autonomy, structure caters to feelings of competency, and positive student-teacher relationships provide feelings of belonging. Yet, it is unknown how ADHD symptoms in early elementary are associated with teachers' NSPs.

Methods:

One hundred and fifty-four first-grade students and 25 teachers from three school boards participated. We assessed children's perception of their teachers' autonomy support and structure and their standardised achievement. We also assessed teachers' perceptions of students' ADHD symptoms, student-teacher relationship quality, and conduct problems. Three linear regression analyses were performed with ADHD symptoms as the predictor and NSPs as the dependent variable. Sex, conduct problems, and achievement scores were included as covariates.

Results:

Sex (i.e., males), greater teacher-reported ADHD symptoms, and more teacher-reported conduct problems were associated with worse teacher-reported student-teacher relationship quality. Teacher-reported ADHD symptoms were positively related to student-reported autonomy support, while teacher-reported conduct problems were negatively associated with student-reported autonomy support. Teacher-reported ADHD symptoms and key covariates did not predict student-reported structure.

Conclusion:

Our study illustrates the need to further evaluate how best to support teachers managing disruptive behaviours in early elementary to protect the motivational needs of young children with ADHD symptoms.

Keywords:

ADHD symptoms academic motivation early elementary needs supportive practices student engagement

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