Preschool individual teacher-child relationship
In the current study, we utilized the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale
(STRS, Pianta & Nimetz, 2001), a well-established tool to gauge
teachers’ perceptions of their relationship with individual children.
The STRS encompasses two key sub-scales: closeness and conflict.
Specifically, the closeness scale consists of 11 items that assess the
extent of warmth and harmonious interactions within TCR. The conflict
scale comprises 12 items designed to capture any negative or
confrontational aspects of these relationships. All items were rated on
a 5-point Likert-type scale, with responses ranging from 1 (definitely
not applicable) to 5 (definitely applicable). The lead teachers from 18
classrooms were invited to report on their relationships with 15
randomly sampled children, and instructions for completing the scale
were given by the researchers before the teachers filled it out. To
enhance the model fit, we excluded two items from the closeness scale
and four from the conflict scale. All remaining factor loadings exceeded
0.50 and the two-factor model demonstrated an adequate fit to the data:
x²/df = 246.677/123 = 2, CFI = 0.925, TLI = 0.906, SRMR = 0.061, RMSEA =
0.061. Furthermore, the internal consistencies of the scales were
notably high, with αCloseness = 0.842 and
αConflict = 0.837.