Poster #75 - Teacher-Child Relationships and Kindergarten Children’s Executive Function Skills in Mainland China

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Multiple studies done in western countries indicated that the positivity of dyadic teacher-child relationships is associated with young children’s higher-order cognitive abilities such as executive function skills. With teachers as the secure base and safe haven, young children are easier to adjust to the environment, learn new knowledge, and socialize with others. However, fewer studies have been done in the oriental context such as mainland China where the educational ideology and practices are quite different from the western world. Moreover, few published studies have connected children’s and teachers’ views on the shared teacher-child relationships and linked both their views to child outcomes. To address these gaps, this study aims to explore: 1). the factor structure of the Chinese version of the Young Children’s Appraisals of Teacher Support scale (Y-CATS; Vervoot et al., 2015); 2). the cross-informant agreement between teachers and children; 3). the associations between child outcomes and teacher-child relationships.

The measures used in this study have been validated in a pilot study done between February and May 2022 (See the summary of the measures in Table 1). The data collection already started in July and is expected to end in November 2022. This study involves three groups of participants: a. 250 kindergarten children aged from 4 to 6 years old (150 have completed the child testing sessions); b. one parent of each child participant (report demographic information); c. one class teacher of each child participant. Children’s executive function skills are evaluated with three behavioral tasks: Fish Flanker task (Christ et al., 2011) for inhibitory control, Backward Animal Span task for working memory, and Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (McClelland et al., 2014) for behavioral self-regulation. Teachers and children report their perceptions of teacher-child relationships on the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta et al., 2001) and the Y-CATS respectively (interviews for children). The questionnaires have been translated from English into Chinese and back translation was done to ensure the translation quality. The child testing sessions are being done one-on-one via Zoom.

After the initial data processing, I will run exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to explore the factor structure of the Y-CATS because it has not been used in the Chinese context. Then, I will run cross-informant CFA to test the agreement between teachers’ and children’s perceptions of teacher-child relationships. Ultimately, I will establish the structural equation models to examine the associations among child outcomes, teacher-child relationships, and family socioeconomic status.

This study intends to investigate how affective teacher-child relationships contribute to young children’s cognitive development and inform educational practitioners of the beneficial way to interact with young children. The results, discussions, and conclusions are not available yet, which will be done after the data collection is completed in November 2022.

Authors

• Jiayin Zheng, University of Cambridge
  Presenting Author

• Michelle Ellefson, University of Cambridge