Teacher-child interactions and children's social skills and problem behaviors: ECEC dosage and disability status as moderators

• Autor(a) principal: Aguiar, Ana Lúcia Vidigal Paixão
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/12558
• topic: Teacher-child interactions; Dosage; Children with disabilities; Social skill; Problem behaviors; Educação pré-escolar; Criança; Problemas sociais; Comportamento; Interações educador/a-criança; Dosagem; Crianças com incapacidade; Competência social; Problemas comportamentais

Multiple studies have reported associations between ECEC quality and dosage and children´s social and behavioral development, with some further suggesting that this association may be particularly strong for more socioeconomically disadvantaged children. In the present study, we examined the direct relation between the quality of teacher-child interactions and children´s social skills and problem behaviors, as well as the moderating effects of ECEC dosage and children´s disability status. Participated in this study 180 typically; developing children (119 boys) and 42 children with disabilities (29 boys) (Mage = 63.75; SD = 7.77), in a total of 222 children, from 44 inclusive classrooms in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, Portugal. Our results indicated that the quality of teacher-child interactions is not associated with children´s social skills and that the proportion of days children were absent from school is negatively associated with their social skills. Simultaneously, we found moderating effects of the number of months with the lead teacher and disability status in the relation between two domains of teacher-child interactions and children’s social skills. Teacher child-interactions did not predict children´s problem behaviors, nor did dosage or disability status moderate this relation. Overall, we found some encouraging results, suggesting that dosage may directly and indirectly influence children´s social development.