How do years of teaching experience and kindergarten group size determine the teacher-child interaction quality?

Abstract

The teacher-child interaction in a preschool educational institution largely determines the child’s success in further school adaptation and education. This research focused on examining the contribution of such factors as a teacher's years of experience and the children's number in a group to the children's interaction quality with teachers. The sample included teachers from 97 groups, in which 3,108 children are taught. The CLASS method was used to assess the interaction quality between children and teachers. Years of experience was a significant predictor of the Positive Climate, Concept Development, Quality of Feedback, and Language Modeling dimensions scores, while the children's number in the group was a negative predictor of the Behavior Management dimension. In addition, for the scores on the Positive сlimate and Quality of Feedback dimension, years of experience is a predictor only in groups with a not very large number of children (less than 38).

1 Introduction

Numerous studies suggest that interaction quality between teachers and children in a kindergarten group largely determines children's developmental outcomes, school readiness and future academic success (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; de Moraes, 2023; Goble et al., 2019). Therefore, studying the factors influencing interaction quality remains a pressing issue in many countries (Ansari et al., 2020; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Among the research in this area, much attention is paid to how teachers’ qualifications, including their educational level and years of teaching experience, are related to the teacher-child interaction quality (Early et al., 2007; Yang et al., 2024). The data obtained in previous studies are very contradictory, and not all research in recent years confirm the teacher's qualifications role in the interaction quality (Lin and Magnuson, 2018; Manning et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2024), which makes further study of this topic and identification of additional significant factors a relevant task. In this regard, this research examined the contribution of teaching experience to the interaction quality between a teacher and preschool children while controlling for such a significant factor as the kindergarten group size, which mediates the interaction between the child and the teacher, according to the ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

The CLASS method (Pianta et al., 2008) is widely used to evaluate the teacher-child interaction quality in preschool institutions, which is considered a procedural component of the educational environment quality (Hamre et al., 2014; Murray and Pianta, 2015). This technique estimates the teacher-child interaction according to three main domains (i.e., Emotional support, Classroom organization, Instructional support), that include 10 dimensions (see Table 1). As many researchers note, this technique is well suited for studying the association between the educational environment quality and the teacher's qualifications, considering the size of the kindergarten groups, since this technique assesses the practices that the teacher uses to create learning environment and manage interaction in the kindergarten group (Graue et al., 2009; Lillard et al., 2025). However, most studies devoted to this topic took into account only three main domains (Denny et al., 2012; Tilbe and Xiaosong, 2024; Vogel, 2010) or the total score (Lin and Magnuson, 2018) according to the CLASS method, whereas in this research we decided to analyze in more detail the relationship between the teachers’ qualifications and the size of the kindergarten group with 10 dimensions of this methodology in order to more deeply understand the role of these factors and the reasons for their influence on the teacher-child interaction quality.

Studies of the association between the initial education level and years of experience of teachers and the interaction quality in a kindergarten group have shown rather contradictory results (Early et al., 2007; Manning et al., 2019; Shishova, 2024). Some studies have demonstrated that Emotional support was higher in kindergarten groups where teachers had fewer years of professional experience (Connor et al., 2005). In research by Denny et al., 2012, it was discovered that teachers’ education level and years of experience made the greatest contribution to the Instructional support domain of the CLASS methodology Tilbe and Xiaosong (2024). also found that teaching experience significantly predicted scores on the Instructional support domain. Thus, a number of studies on the contribution of teachers’ qualifications (which include their education and work experience) to the teacher-child interaction quality in a kindergarten group have revealed significant associations with the Instructional support quality (Yoshikawa et al., 2013). However, a lot of research has not confirmed this association (Abu Taleb, 2012; Early et al., 2007; Eckhardt and Egert, 2018; Gerber et al., 2007; Manning et al., 2019; Egert et al., 2018).

In this regard, many researchers believe that it is more important to investigate the contribution of teachers’ additional educational courses (i.e., additional education programs or advanced training) to the educational environment quality improvement (Lin and Magnuson, 2018; Yang et al., 2024). As Lin and Magnuson (2018) revealed, teachers who had no additional education beyond secondary professional education and special education specialized in early childhood were in significantly lower quality classrooms compared to teachers with a college degree. Although, only a few studies confirm the existence of a positive association between teachers’ participation in professional development programs and the educational environment quality (Lin and Magnuson, 2018; Yang et al., 2024). This may be explained by the difficulties in considering many factors associated with the professional development programs completed by teachers (who developed the program, how involved and motivated teachers were to complete it, how its completion and results were monitored, etc.) (Lin and Magnuson, 2018). On the other hand, the lack of associations between teacher qualifications and the educational environment quality can be explained by the fact that direct analysis of these associations is an overly simplified scheme that does not take into account many significant additional factors that can influence the identified relationships.

One of the additional factors is the class size or child-teacher ratio (Graue et al., 2009). We tend to agree with authors who believe that class size is a significant structural educational environment's quality factor that is important to consider when analyzing the associations between the group interaction quality and teacher qualifications (Ball and Forzani, 2007; Blatchford, 2003; Graue et al., 2009). As Blatchford (2003) has written, the class size necessarily influences what the teacher has to deal with and may force him/her to make choices and compromises. Developing his ideas, Graue et al., 2009 noted that the association between class size and the educational environment quality is important to study precisely from the perspective of how the teacher interacts with children in groups with different numbers of children Francis and Barnett (2019). added, that «class size is a particularly important program design feature because it is costly and has the potential to influence the interactions of children with teachers, each other, and materials» (p.49).

Although Pianta et al.'s (2005) research found that child-teacher ratios had no association with the educational environment quality. Most studies conducted on preschoolers (Francis, Barnett, 2019; Mashburn et al., 2008; Vogel, 2010), elementary school children (Graue et al., 2009) and adolescents (Allen et al., 2013) demonstrated that higher teacher-child interaction quality was observed in classes with smaller children's numbers. Ball and Forzani (2007) explained the role of this factor by the fact that teachers can ensure more productive interaction between students with a relatively small class size. A study by Graue et al., 2009 that took place in preschool and elementary school classrooms found that in smaller classrooms, teachers had more opportunities to provide higher levels of Instructional support. For example, with small class sizes, teachers have the opportunity to provide children with personalized feedback, to connect the phenomena being studied with their personal experiences, and to use feedback loops. However, a recent study by Lillard et al. (2025) not identified associations between the group size and the Instructional support scores in kindergarten groups working according to the traditional education system. The authors attribute the findings to several possible causes: the influence of teachers’ education levels or years of experience, which were not taken into account in this study; or the higher stress levels that teachers may experience in larger groups. This study once again highlights the inconsistency of all available data on the relationship between teacher qualifications, group size and the teacher-child interactions quality and shows the need for additional research that would clarify and deepen the accumulated data, as well as help to better understand the reasons behind the identified patterns. Most existing studies, as Lillard et al. (2025) rightly notes, do not take into account both factors—teacher experience and group size—which will be taken into account in this study. Moreover, most of the previously obtained data were shown on kindergartens with a small child-teacher ratio (1:10–1:15), while in many countries around the world this ratio is significantly higher (it can reach a ratio of 1:30, and sometimes even more) (OECD 2023). This highlights another gap in existing research, demonstrating the need for further research in larger groups.

1.2 This research

In connection with all of the above, within this study we wanted to assess the contribution of teaching experience to the teacher-child interaction quality in kindergarten groups, taking into account the group size. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that we look at the influence of not only each factor separately, but also the contribution of the combination of these factors to the teacher-child interaction quality. Unlike most previous studies, we included all 10 dimensions of the CLASS methodology in the analysis in order to better understand which aspects of teacher-child interactions are significantly associated with the structural factors studied (i.e., years of experience and children's number in the group). This will help to better understand the reasons for these associations in the future.

It is important to note some features of the Russian preschool education system that allow this study to expand on the contradictory scientific data available. Firstly, the size of public kindergarten groups varies significantly across Russia, from 20 to 50 children, allowing us to collect qualitatively different data from most previous American studies, in which the size of groups typically did not exceed 20–26 children (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2023). Secondly, in most Russian kindergartens, a teacher works with the entire group of children during his/her shift alone (without an assistant), and therefore the teacher-child ratio in most Russian groups is from 1:20 to 1:50, which is very different from the well-studied ratio of 10–15 children per adult (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2023; Mashburn et al., 2008). This feature was the reason why we analyzed the group size, and not the ratio of the adults and children in kindergarten groups. This feature of Russian kindergartens also shows the novelty of this study in comparison with previous ones. However, the results obtained will be important for many Eastern European and South American countries and others (Gerald et al., 2022; OECD 2023).

In this study, we did not focus on the teachers’ initial professional education level (higher or secondary professional level) and the analysis of advanced training courses they completed, but considered years of experience as a key factor. This decision was based on the peculiarities of the Russian education system. Firstly, in accordance with the requirements of the Professional Standard (2016), a preschool teacher must have a higher education or secondary professional education that would be related to pedagogical sciences. In addition, if a teacher does not have a specialized education, he or she must take appropriate retraining courses in preschool education before starting to work with children (Grinshkun and Suvorova, 2024). Thus, all teachers in preschool educational institutions have specialized education, most often higher education, which makes taking this factor into account insignificant. Secondly, in the Russian education system, taking advanced training courses recommended by the Ministry of Education is a mandatory part of teachers’ certification. Accordingly, the teacher's years of experience suggests that during the years that he/she worked in the preschool educational institution, he/she completed a fairly large number of additional educational courses. That is, the longer the experience, the more additional courses the teacher has completed. However, the teachers’ involvement and the degree to which they have assimilated the knowledge acquired within these courses cannot be assessed, which makes taking this factor into account as separate from years of experience uninformative (Lin and Magnuson, 2018).

Thus, the research question of this study was how the combination of two factors—teaching experience and the group size—is associated with the quality of teacher-child interaction in kindergarten groups.

2 Method

2.1 Sample

An assessment of the teacher-child interaction quality was conducted in 97 groups of public kindergartens from different regions of Russia (i.e., Moscow, Sochi and Kazan). All kindergartens are public and education in them is free for children. The children's number in the groups varied from 15 to 52 people (M = 32; SD = 6.5). A total of 3108 children studied in these groups. The children studied according to the same educational program: “From Birth to School” (Antonova et al., 2016).

A survey was conducted among 97 teachers working in these groups, they were women aged 22–64 years (M = 42.9; SD = 10.29) with work experience from 1 to 38 years (M = 14.2; SD = 10.58). 19 educators had secondary professional education (i.e., college), and 78 had higher education.

2.2 Measures

To evaluate the teacher-child interaction quality the study used the CLASS (Pre-k level) method (Pianta, et al., 2008). This technique was previously tested in many American classrooms (Pianta et al., 2020), as well as in Russian kindergartens (Bukhalenkova, Almazova, 2022). It involves conducting at least four 30-minute observation cycles in a group (total duration = at least 120 min per group) by a specially trained tester. After each observation, the tester gives assessments on a 7-point Likert dimension for each of the method's 10 dimensions. That said, 1 and 2 points are related to a low level, 3–5 points characterize an medium level, and 6–7 points describe a high level of interaction quality. As a result, the mean of the scores obtained for all observations in one group was calculated for each dimension.

Information on the teachers’ qualifications (i.e., years of experience and education level) was gathered via a questionnaire. It included open questions about the teacher's age and years of experience at preschool institutions: “How many years in total have you worked as a teacher in preschool institutions?” (the teacher had to write down the number of years). The questionnaire also included the question about the teacher's education level: “What is your education?” and offered the following answer options: “pedagogical college/teacher's school”; “pedagogical institute/university”; “PhD in (please, indicate the subject)” and “other (please explain)”.

2.3 Procedure

In all groups, CLASS-certified (by Teachstone) testers conducted the CLASS observation once during one academic year (approximately in the second half of the academic year, i.e., the teachers worked in the observed group for at least 4 months). One expert in each group conducting observation and evaluation. Testers used the paper-based CLASS Pre-K observation sheets which included activity setting variables [number of adults and children in the classroom, content (math, art, etc.), formats (whole group, small group, etc.)], and the ten CLASS dimensions. At least 4 observations were made in each group (cycles of 20 min of observation followed by 5–10 min of scoring). Observations were made in the morning hours (started between 9:00 and 9:10 AM), when the children's schedule included group learning activities (i.e., on language, basic mathematical skills, etc.).

All observations were made on one teacher who worked in the group with children on the day of the CLASS method. Two teachers can work in one kindergarten group, but they alternate and never work with a group at the same time. That is, the scores according to the CLASS method were attributed to one teacher, and he/she was also given a questionnaire to collect information about his/her qualifications. Information on the teachers’ qualifications was gathered via a paper questionnaire, to which teachers responded in writing within a week after the group had an interaction quality evaluation.

All parents were informed of the purpose of the study and gave written informed consent for their children's involvement in the observation. The research was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Psychology at Lomonosov Moscow State University (the approval No: 2023/18).

2.4 Statistical analysis

Statistical analysis was performed in the Jamovi 2.3.26 package. Using the Shapiro–Wilk criterion, it was determined that the scores on all dimensions of the CLASS method did not differ significantly from normal, which allowed parametric criteria to be used in the analysis. An analysis of descriptive statistics was carried out. Using the Student's T-test for independent samples, differences in assessments on the CLASS dimensions were tested in groups of teachers with secondary professional education and higher education. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to test the relationship between work experience and the number of children in a group with assessments of the teacher-child interaction quality. For each CLASS dimension, a General Linear Model (GLM) was constructed to determine whether years of experience, children's number in the group, and interactions between these variables were significant for dimension scores. For significant interaction models, moderator models were considered to identify the moderator levels (i.e., children's number in the group) for which the predictor (i.e., years of experience) is significant.

3 Results

3.1 Teacher-child interaction quality assessment results

The descriptive statistics presented in Table 1 demonstrate that on the dimensions included in Instructional support domain, most of the groups received lower scores (low or medium level) than on the dimensions included in the Emotional support and Classroom organization domains (mostly medium to high quality level, but ranges from low to high levels).

We checked that for preschool teachers with different educational levels (i.e., higher education or secondary education) no significant differences were obtained in assessments on any of the CLASS dimensions (Student's T-test for independent samples).

3.2 The relationship between the CLASS domains and dimensions and the teacher’s years of experience as well as the group size

It was found that work experience was associated with Positive Climate (r = .239; p = .026), Concept Development (r = .208; p = .039), Quality of Feedback (r = .272; p = .011) and Language Modelling (r = .222; p = .031), while the number of children in a group was not associated with scores on any CLASS dimension. The GLM models where the CLASS dimensions scores served as independent variables, while the teachers’ years of experience, group size and their combination served as predictors were tested. Analyze of models for all Emotional support domain dimensions showed that teacher's years of experience turned out to be a significant predictor of scores only for the Positive climate dimension (Table 2). Group size turned out to be a significant moderator between the years of experience and the Positive climate dimension scores. In this regard, this model was examined at different moderator levels. The model for the Positive Climate dimension scores depending on the teachers’ years of experience (Table 3; Figure 1a) shows that years of experience is a significant predictor of the Positive climate scores in a group only if there are not very many children in the group (i.e., average number or below the average by one standard deviation, so no more than 38 children). The effect size for significant results is medium (>.06). With a large number of children (more than 38 children in one group), the teacher's work experience is not a predictor of scores on the Positive climate dimension.

Figure 1

When analyzing models for all dimensions included in the Classroom organization domain, a significant model was obtained only for the Behavior management dimension (Table 2). The group size turned out to be a predictor (inversely) for the scores on this dimension. Whereas teacher's years of experience does not predict scores on any of the dimensions included in this domain.

The analysis revealed that teacher's years of experience is a predictor of scores on all three dimensions included in the Instructional support domain (Table 2). Group size turned out to be a significant moderator between years of experience and the scores on the Quality of Feedback dimension. The model for scores on the Quality of Feedback dimension depending on the teachers’ years of experience (Table 3; Figure 1b) demonstrated that years of experience is a significant scores predictor on the dimension in the group only if there are not many children in the group (less than 38 children). The effect size for small groups is medium (.084), and for medium-sized groups it is between small and medium (.047). With a large number of children (more than 38), the teacher's years of experience is not a predictor of scores on the Quality of Feedback dimension.

4 Discussion

The conducted study assessed the contribution of teaching experience to the teacher-child interaction quality in kindergarten groups, taking into account the group size. It was discovered that there were no significant differences in the assessments of the teacher-child interaction quality on all the CLASS dimensions between teachers with secondary professional education and higher education. This result confirms that the initial level of specialized education in Russia is not as significant a factor as the teachers’ years of experience. This is consistent with the results of previous studies conducted in other countries (Egert, 2018; Manning et al., 2019).

It was shown that years of experience is a predictor of the Positive climate dimension scores. Positive climate dimension is included in the Emotional support domain and reflects goodwill, respect, sincere interest and pleasure in the interaction between the teacher and students, as well as in the communication of children with each other (Pianta et al., 2008). This result is somewhat at odds with previous findings from several studies that demonstrated that shorter teaching experience was associated with higher rates of Emotional Support (Connor et al., 2005; Mashburn et al., 2008). However, a large amount of previous research has not discovered any relationship between teachers’ work experience and the interaction quality (Abu Taleb, 2012; Early et al., 2007; Eckhardt and Egert, 2018; Gerber et al., 2007; Manning et al., 2019). It can be assumed that the differences in the obtained results are associated with the lack of analysis of CLASS dimensions, as well as with the lack of the control over the group size in previous studies, which was taken into account in this one.

The fact that teacher's years of experience is a predictor of Positive climate can be explained by the fact that teachers who receive genuine pleasure from interacting with children and love their work, who want to develop in their chosen profession, remain working in the preschool education system (Gorbushina et al., 2022; Sobkin and Veryasova, 2013). In addition, often teachers with less experience are younger people who, as a rule, are more overloaded, since they solve many additional developmental tasks (i.e., building a family, giving birth and raising small children, etc.) (Sobkin and Veryasova, 2013). In connection with all of the above, more experienced teachers have more resources for emotionally supportive communication with children in a kindergarten group. Another explanation for this association may be that more experienced teachers have lower stress and emotional exhaustion levels as they are better able to cope with difficult situations that arise in a group, as well as regulate their own emotional state (Ansari et al., 2020; Jeon et al., 2018). However, all the assumptions made require verification in further studies by taking into account the important variables such as teacher burnout (Ansari et al., 2020), their marital status and the presence of children, as well as their motivation (Rudnova et al., 2023) and self-efficacy assessment (Mitina, 2024).

It is crucial to emphasize that years of experience is a significant predictor of Positive climate scores in a group only if there are not too many children in the group (less than 38 children). The average effect size obtained for significant results emphasizes the non-random nature of the results obtained. This result further confirms the assumption about the possible influence of the stress factor, since previous studies have demonstrated that in large kindergarten groups, the teacher has to spend a lot of energy on managing the behavior of preschoolers, who are not always ready to sit quietly in one place and listen to him/her, which creates additional stress at work (Tomlinson, 2009). The results of this research are consistent with this assumption. It was revealed that the more children in the groups, the lower the scores on the Behavior management dimension, which reflects the effectiveness of the methods used by teachers to prevent and redirect unacceptable behavior in the group.

The teacher's years of experience also turned out to be a predictor on scores of all three dimensions included in the Instructional support domain, which shows the frequency and effectiveness of the teacher's use of techniques that develop children's thinking and speech (Concept Development, Quality of Feedback, and Language Modeling). This result is in good agreement with the data of previous studies that have shown a connection of teachers’ qualification with the Instructional support domain (Tilbe and Xiaosong, 2024; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). This result is explained that thanks to additional educational courses taken, more experienced teachers know better how to develop the preschoolers’ cognitive abilities (Lin and Magnuson, 2018).

An important result is the discovery that children's number in a group is also a significant moderator between teacher's years of experience and the Quality of Feedback dimension scores, which reflects the degree of the teacher's mastery of techniques that deepen children's understanding of the educational material being explained to them, stimulate their reflection, and also contribute to increasing children's confidence in their abilities and skills. This result is consistent with previous studies in which researchers have highlighted the difficulties that teachers face when working in large groups (Ball and Forzani, 2007; Blatchford, 2003; Graue et al., 2009). Of course, giving quality feedback to a child or building a dialogue with him/her that would lead him/her to a deeper understanding of the processes and phenomena studied is only possible when working with a small number of children. When the group is very large (more than 38 people), the teacher cannot be attentive enough to each one; he/she has to choose which of the children to support (Graue et al., 2009). The average effect size for small groups demonstrates that the results obtained are not random. However, the results for medium-sized groups require further verification, as the effect size is smaller than average.

Thus, the conducted study allowed us to confirm and clarify the previously identified associations between the teachers’ qualifications and the Emotional and Instructional support quality in the kindergarten group. It was shown that years of experience is a predictor of scores on the Positive climate dimension as a part of the Emotional support domain, as well as on Concept Development, Quality of Feedback, Language Modeling dimensions included in the Instructional support domain. Moreover, the obtained results demonstrated that even if the teacher has extensive experience working in a preschool institution, in the case where the children's number in a group is more than 38, the scores on the Positive climate and Quality of Feedback dimensions cease to be associated with the years of experience. At the same time, for small (up to 26 children) and medium (from 26 to 38 children) groups, years of experience is associated with scores on these dimensions. In addition, the group size turned out to be an important negative predictor on the Behavior management dimension. It is key to emphasize that in the case of kindergartens in Russia and many other countries (OECD 2023), it is assumed that one teacher (without an assistant or a second teacher) works with whole group for half or the whole day. Thus, our results show that an experienced teacher can successfully use techniques to develop children's speech and thinking even when working alone with a large group of children, but it becomes difficult to provide quality feedback in a group with an excessively large number of children due to the fact that a large number of children is difficult to manage. Thus, the practical significance of this study is that it allows us to understand how large a kindergarten group can be and if the group is large, it requires more experienced teachers.

To supplement and clarify the obtained data, the research design could have been slightly different: it would have been possible to take a measurement of teacher-child interaction quality not once, but twice—at the beginning and at the end of the school year, in order to include the dynamics of interaction quality in the analysis (Goble et al., 2019). However, in this study, we specifically conducted observations in the second part of the school year, when the interaction between children and the teacher is already quite well established, when the children have already adapted to the kindergarten. In addition, in the future, it would be important to consider other variables that may mediate the identified relationships. Firstly, such factors include significant characteristics of educators such as the stress level, emotional burnout level and/or the teachers’ well-being (Ansari et al., 2020; Denisova et al., 2023; Jeon et al., 2018; Vorobyeva and Matveeva, 2025), their marital status and the presence of children, as well as their motivation (Rudnova et al., 2023) and self-efficacy assessment (Mitina, 2024). Secondly, it would be important to take into account additional factors related to the structural quality of the educational environment, which include features of teacher-parents interaction (Khrustaleva and Pisarenko, 2025), duration of children's attendance at kindergarten (Veraksa et al., 2023), the presence of children with special educational needs (Nigmatullina et al., 2023).

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