Quality of Structure and Teacher–Child Relationship: A Kindergarten–Childcare Services Comparison in Two Countries.

Résumé 0

Studies underlined the crucial importance of teacher–child relationship quality for children’s development in early childhood education (ECE) (Sabol, Bohlmann and Downer, 2018). However, results regarding structural variables that explain those relationships, in particular at an international level, remain much less consistent (Hartman, Warash, Curtis and Hirst, 2016). Some reported a link between process-based variables with training and experience levels, as well as with class composition factors (Buell, Han, and Vukelich, 2017), while others found a link with gender (Bigras, Lemay, Bouchard, and Eryasa, 2016). The present study aims to compare teacher–child relationship quality, as well as structural quality of the ECE services hosting 3 year-old children from two countries (France and Canada). Moreover, this study also aims to identify which structural quality variables explain the quality of the relationships. The sample compared 41 kindergarten classes from Grenoble (France) with 40 childcare groups from Montreal (Canada). All educators (ME) and teachers (GT) were observed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS Pre-K; Pianta et al., 2008) by certified raters. Participants also completed a questionnaire regarding their experience and training levels as well as their age, gender and the group sizes in each class/group. Overall, the two contexts were significantly different regarding the following structural variables. GT were older than the ME, t(71.94) = –3.381, p = .001, r = .37, had a significantly longer educational experience, M = 6.87, SD = 8.35), z (271.5) = –3.36, p = .001, r = –0.53, a higher university degree X2 (1) = 57.08, p < .001), whereas ME had significantly more females than GT, X2 (1) = 4.10, p = .043). The classroom’s average group size was significantly larger in Grenoble kindergartens than in Montreal childcare services, z (30) = −7.25, p < .001, r = –1.15) (see Table 1). Montreal childcare groups experienced significantly higher process-based variables than Grenoble kindergarten groups in the three CLASS domains (emotional support: 5.8 vs. 4.0, t(69) = 11.89, p < .001, r = .82 ; classroom organization: 5.6 vs. 4.2, t(79) = 8.32, p < .001, r = .68; instructional support: 2.8 vs. 2.2, t(71.65) = 4.12, p < .001, r = .44) (see Table 1). A multiple linear regression significantly predicted each of the CLASS domain scores based on their structural quality variables (i.e., university degree, class size, age, and gender). Emotional support, F(4,80) = 33.31, p < 0.001, R2 = .64, and classroom organization, F(4,80) = 17.61, p < 0.001, R2 = .48, domains’ mean scores were inversely related to the teachers/educators’ age, university degree, and classroom/group’s size. Instructional support domain’s mean scores, F(4,80) = 8.09, p < 0.001, R2 = .30, were inversely related to teachers/educators’ age and classroom/group’s size (see Table 2). The present study helped support previous findings, showing that greater regulation could be linked with a higher processes environmental quality in ECE programs (Hartman et al., 2016). Moreover, this study sheds light on the structure and processes of two different ECE systems for 3 year-old children in Western countries.