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.