A meta-analysis of teacher–child interaction and early child outcomes from the perspective of CLASS

ABSTRACT

This meta-analysis aims to clarify the relationship between teacher–child interaction and children's outcomes in language, mathematics, literacy, social development, and self-regulation based on the perspective of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). A total of 24 studies with 139 independent effect sizes and 67,919 participants were included through literature search and screening. The results show that CLASS is moderately correlated with children's outcomes in language, mathematics, self-regulation, and correlated with children's literacy and social development to a low degree. Apart from within-domain links to children's outcomes, most CLASS domains have cross-domain links to children's outcomes. These links are also influenced to varying degrees by the level of economic and social development, children's commonly used language, child outcome measurement tools, and the emotional support domain score of CLASS. Future studies should standardize the presentation of key information and explore the interaction of multiple variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher–child interaction
• CLASS
• early education
• child outcomes
• meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qikai Zheng

Qikai Zheng received the B.Ed. Degree in Preschool education from Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, China, in 2020 and the M.Phil. degree in Early Childhood Education and Child Development from University of Macau, Zhuhai, China, in 2023. His research direction is quality evaluation of preschool education.

Xinjun Zheng

Xinjun Zheng received the B.Ed. Degree in School education from Hangzhou University, Hangzhou, China, in 1990, a M.S. degree in Basic Psychology from East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, and Ph.D. degree in Developmental and educational psychology from Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China, in 2008. He is currently a professor of psychology in Wenzhou University. His research interests include social development, Moral psychology and Quality evaluation of preschool education.

Naihua Liu

Naihua Liu received the B.A. degree in Early Childhood Education from Chiayi University, Taiwan, China, in 1989 and the M.A. in Philosophy Education from Nanhua University, Taiwan, China, in 2003. The Ph.D. degree in Preschool Education from East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, in 2007. She is currently working in University of Macau. Her research interests include Curriculum design in early childhood education, Administration for early childhood education and Children literature.

Fen Wang

Fen Wang received the bachelor degree in Preschool education from Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, Nanchang, China, in 2020. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in preschool education at Wenzhou University with a research focus on child language development.

Yuwei Zhao

Yuwei Zhao received the B.Ed. degree in Preschool Education from Inner Mongolia Honder College of Arts and Sciences, Hohhot, China, in 2021. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in preschool education at Wenzhou University with a research focus on child language development.