Teacher–Child Interactions in Early Childhood Education and Care Classrooms Characteristics, Predictivity, Dependency and Methodological Issues

How children?s development is shaped by Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) classrooms and especially by teacher?child interactions in those settings is a major issue in research and politics, which has been researched for several decades. This book investigates this important topic by raising three overarching questions:

(1) What are ?good? teacher?child interactions and how they can be measured?

(2) Which individual and/or contextual aspects are associated with teacher?child interactions?

(3) What is the impact of teacher?child interactions on the development of children's competencies?

The book ties in these fundamental questions with educational research by bringing together international studies from interdisciplinary backgrounds and presenting current research on the characteristics, predictivity, dependency, and methodological issues of teacher?child interactions in ECEC classrooms. The considered studies conducted in Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece and Portugal each aim to enrich the scientific discourse and provide fruitful implications for policy and practice.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Research Papers in Education journal.

Introduction: Teacher–child interactions in Early Childhood Education and Care classrooms: characteristics, predictivity, dependency and methodological issues Wilfried Smidt & Simone Lehrl

Chapter 1: Evaluating the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale in the Greek educational setting: an item parcelling perspective, Nikolaos Tsigilis, Athanasios Gregoriadis & Vasilis Grammatikopoulos

Chapter 2: The quality of caregiver–child interactions in infant classrooms in Portugal: the role of caregiver education, Sílvia Barros, Joana Cadima, Ana Isabel Pinto, Donna M. Bryant, Manuela Pessanha, Carla Peixoto & Vera Coelho

Chapter 3: Pedagogical differences and similarities between male and female educators, and their impact on boys’ and girls’ behaviour in early childhood education and care institutions in Austria, Johannes Huber & Bernd Traxl

Chapter 4: The role of professional exchange in improving language-related process quality in daycare centres, Elisabeth Resa, Imke Groeneveld, Daniel Turani & Yvonne Anders

Chapter 5: Differential effects of preschool quality on children’s emergent literacy skills in the final preschool year in Germany, Simone Lehrl & Wilfried Smidt

Chapter 6: Development of pre-academic skills and motivation in kindergarten: a subgroup analysis between classroom quality profiles, Jenni Salminen, Eija Pakarinen, Anna-Maija Poikkeus & Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen

Chapter 7: Bilingual children’s language learning in Australian early childhood education and care settings, Frank Niklas, Collette Tayler & Caroline Cohrssen

Wilfried Smidt is a Full Professor of education at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research focuses on educational quality, teacher personality, professionalization, and leadership.

Simone Lehrl is a Researcher at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her research focuses on educational quality and its effects on children’s development.