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The classroom relational environment and children’s early development in preschool

The present study considered the ways in which interactional quality in the classroom and teacher–child relationships independently and synergistically shaped the early academic, social-behavioral, and executive function outcomes of 1,498 preschoolers from low-income families from a large, culturally, and linguistically diverse county. The findings revealed that children who had closer and less conflictual relationships with their teachers demonstrated greater improvements in all domains of school readiness across the preschool year. Moreover, preschool attendees did not reap the maximum academic benefits from high quality classroom environments unless they also had high-quality individual relationships with their teachers. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. The current study provides unique insight into the ways in which interactional quality and relationships matter independently and synergistically for children's early learning and development by investigating both classroom-level teacher–child interactions and individual children's relationships with teachers in preschool. We explored two research questions: (a) To what extent do children's developmental gains (i.e., academic achievement, social-behavior, and executive function) in preschool vary as a function of the quality of teacher–child interactions, teacher–child closeness, and teacher–child conflict? (b) Do teacher–child closeness and conflict moderate the associations between the quality of teacher–child interactions and changes in children's learning and development? In addressing these research questions, our study addresses important gaps in knowledge regarding the ways in which individual children's relationships with their teacher and the classroom environment are associated with developmental gains across the pre-K year.