Abstract
Early care and education (ECE) programs in the United States are increasingly focused on children’s school-readiness skills in addition to early socialization, and quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) have highlighted the important role of teacher-child relationships in supporting children’s learning in ECE programs. This chapter describes the role of high-quality teacher-child relationships for ECE and QRIS in the US context. Based on developmental theory and research, we define effective teacher-child interactions as teachers who are warm, sensitive, and responsive to the needs of children while providing well-organized classroom experiences and intentional interactions with children. With an increasing number of children from bilingual households participating in the US ECE programs, we also discuss teachers’ sensitivity to children’s language, home culture, and backgrounds as it promotes learning and creates trusting relationships among teachers and children in ECE.
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Soliday Hong, S., Udommana, P. (2018). Early Childhood Teacher-Child Relationships in the United States: Theory, Practices, and Regulation. In: Fleer, M., van Oers, B. (eds) International Handbook of Early Childhood Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0927-7_36
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