Teacher-child relationship quality in early childhood education: the importance of relationship patterns

The purpose of this study was to examine kindergarten teachers' and children's perceptions of their relationships following a person-centred approach, and to describe patterns of relationships between them. 67 Kindergarten teachers and 403 children completed two measures designed to explore their perceptions of their relations. Four patterns of kindergarten teacher-child relationships were identified both from teachers and children reports. Results showed that three of the reported patterns resembled patterns reported by other researchers for teacher-child relationships. An interesting finding was that the notion of dependency and its relation with closeness and conflict had a different interpretation from teachers in the Greek educational context. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.