Teacher-child relationships as a context for young children's socio-emotional development

Early teacher-child relationships have been studied mainly within the framework of attachment theory and developmental systems theory. Building on these theoretical approaches, research will be reviewed that documents the significance of teacher-child relationships for young children’s socio-emotional development. I will give specific attention to the possible protective role of teacher-child relationships for children who are at risk for socio-emotional difficulties, such as children with insecure attachments to their primary caregivers. The mechanisms assumed to explain the predictive value of teacher-child relationship quality will be discussed. Furthermore, antecedents of differences in teacher-child relationship quality will be addressed. In specific, I will focus on the issue of continuity between parent-child attachment quality and teacher-child relationship quality. Using own research findings, I will show how characteristics of children and their family environment interact with characteristics of teachers and classroom environments to impact upon the quality of teacher-child relationships. Implications for research and for ways to improve teacher-child relationship quality will be discussed.status: publishe