2 . Kindergarten represents a crucial environment in which children develop school-related skills and patterns of engagement. They form the basis for the development of later competence which is important for academic success. As for later academic skills, kindergarten achievements have been found to have great predictive value.

Given the long-lasting effects that kindergarten experiences have on later schooling, it is important to understand the factors associated with children's learning and motivation during this time. The quality of teacher-student interaction has been found to be important in terms of many different academic and socio-emotional outcomes. However, much of the previous work in the field has focused on children in later grades in elementary school and has been conducted in the United States. Fewer studies have been conducted in other educational environments and in kindergarten specifically.

Some researchers investigated bidirectional links between the quality of teacher-child relationships and children’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math in Finland. Participants were 461 Finnish kindergarteners (6-year-olds) and 48 teachers.

The results indicated that teacher-perceived(教师感知的)conflicts predicted children’s lower pre-academic skills in both literacy and math. It is possible that when children experience conflicts with teachers, the negative emotions attached to these conflicts are harmful to children’s engagement in learning and curtail their interest in academic tasks. It’s also possible that children experiencing conflicts are missing out on time for learning literacy and math, either because they become separated from instructional activities or because teachers have to spend more instructional time on behavioral management.

The findings highlight the importance of kindergarten teachers being aware of how their relationships with children can influence children’s later schooling. Therefore, it would be important to develop pre-service and in-service programs and interventions to help teachers. Teacher education programs may also benefit teachers not only in academic content and peda-gogical (教育学的)practices but also in strategies used to build supportive relationships with children.