Examination of teacher–child interactions in early childhood education programmes in the United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT

Teacher–child interactions provide an important context for children’s development and learning. The study explored how teacher- and classroom-level factors were associated with quality of teacher–child interactions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We also investigated associations between teacher–child interactions and child outcomes. Teacher–child interactions were observed in 60 kindergarten classrooms using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, for the first time with this population. Pre-academic skills (letter and number knowledge), behavioural regulation (assessed with the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task), and stress response physiology (assessed with salivary cortisol levels) were measured in a sample of 115 five-year-old children, recruited from 22 of the 60 classrooms. Results provided moderate evidence for a three-domain structure of teacher–child interactions. Some differences in the quality of teacher–child interactions were related to teachers’ years of experience. Correlational findings suggest links between quality of emotional support with children’s pre-academic skills and behavioural regulation. Results are also discussed in relation to similar international studies to highlight any unique findings to the UAE context.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher–child interactions
• CLASS
• pre-academic skills
• behavioural regulation
• stress physiology

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all school principals, kindergarten teachers, and children who supported or participated in this project. We also thank J. Lawrence Aber and Hirokazu Yoshikawa for their valuable comments on an early version of the manuscript and the Abu Dhabi Education Council for the support of the research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Note that these numbers differ from what has been reported for the subsample of children who participated in the individual assessments. The numbers here represent all children in the participating classrooms in 16 ECE centres whereas the previous numbers only represent children in 6 of the 16 ECE centres for whom we got parents’ consent for their child’s participation.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported in part by a Zayed University Research Incentive Fund (R15114) to the first and second author.