Wilfried Smidt is a Full Professor of education at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research focuses on educational quality, teacher personality, professionalization, and leadership. Simone Lehrl is a Researcher at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her research focuses on educational quality and its effects on children’s development.

• Introduction: Teacher–child interactions in Early Childhood Education and Care classrooms: characteristics, predictivity, dependency and methodological issues Wilfried Smidt & Simone Lehrl Chapter 1: Evaluating the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale in the Greek educational setting: an item parcelling perspective, Nikolaos Tsigilis, Athanasios Gregoriadis & Vasilis Grammatikopoulos Chapter 2: The quality of caregiver–child interactions in infant classrooms in Portugal: the role of caregiver education, Sílvia Barros, Joana Cadima, Ana Isabel Pinto, Donna M. Bryant, Manuela Pessanha, Carla Peixoto & Vera Coelho Chapter 3: Pedagogical differences and similarities between male and female educators, and their impact on boys’ and girls’ behaviour in early childhood education and care institutions in Austria, Johannes Huber & Bernd Traxl Chapter 4: The role of professional exchange in improving language-related process quality in daycare centres, Elisabeth Resa, Imke Groeneveld, Daniel Turani & Yvonne Anders Chapter 5: Differential effects of preschool quality on children’s emergent literacy skills in the final preschool year in Germany, Simone Lehrl & Wilfried Smidt Chapter 6: Development of pre-academic skills and motivation in kindergarten: a subgroup analysis between classroom quality profiles, Jenni Salminen, Eija Pakarinen, Anna-Maija Poikkeus & Marja-Kristiina LerkkanenChapter 7: Bilingual children’s language learning in Australian early childhood education and care settings, Frank Niklas, Collette Tayler & Caroline Cohrssen

Wilfried Smidt is a Full Professor of education at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research focuses on educational quality, teacher personality, professionalization, and leadership. Simone Lehrl is a Researcher at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her research focuses on educational quality and its effects on children’s development.

• Introduction: Teacher–child interactions in Early Childhood Education and Care classrooms: characteristics, predictivity, dependency and methodological issues Wilfried Smidt & Simone Lehrl Chapter 1: Evaluating the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale in the Greek educational setting: an item parcelling perspective, Nikolaos Tsigilis, Athanasios Gregoriadis & Vasilis Grammatikopoulos Chapter 2: The quality of caregiver–child interactions in infant classrooms in Portugal: the role of caregiver education, Sílvia Barros, Joana Cadima, Ana Isabel Pinto, Donna M. Bryant, Manuela Pessanha, Carla Peixoto & Vera Coelho Chapter 3: Pedagogical differences and similarities between male and female educators, and their impact on boys’ and girls’ behaviour in early childhood education and care institutions in Austria, Johannes Huber & Bernd Traxl Chapter 4: The role of professional exchange in improving language-related process quality in daycare centres, Elisabeth Resa, Imke Groeneveld, Daniel Turani & Yvonne Anders Chapter 5: Differential effects of preschool quality on children’s emergent literacy skills in the final preschool year in Germany, Simone Lehrl & Wilfried Smidt Chapter 6: Development of pre-academic skills and motivation in kindergarten: a subgroup analysis between classroom quality profiles, Jenni Salminen, Eija Pakarinen, Anna-Maija Poikkeus & Marja-Kristiina LerkkanenChapter 7: Bilingual children’s language learning in Australian early childhood education and care settings, Frank Niklas, Collette Tayler & Caroline Cohrssen