Teacher-child interactions and children's cognitive and social skills in Chinese preschool classroom

CITATION

Hu, B., Fan, X., Wu, Z., LoCasale-Crouch, J., Yang, N., and Zhang, J. (2017). Teacher-child interactions and children's cognitive and social skills in Chinese preschool classroom. Children and Youth Services Review, 79, 78–86

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A B S T R A C T
Quality early childhood education (ECE) is central to children's development and, thus, has become a focus of
the current Chinese education agenda. Using a sample of 589 Chinese children in 59 preschool classrooms, this
study examined how a key aspect of ECE quality, teacher-child interactions, was related to children's skills.
Findings indicated that teacher-child interactions were related to children's cognitive skills, but not to social
skills. These results contribute to the growing international research literature on the critical role teacher-child
interactions play with children's learning and development. Implications for policy and professional development
are discussed.


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