ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
We Train, but Can They Teach? Evaluating Pre-service Nursery Teachers' Teaching Competence using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System: Toddler Version (CLASS-Toddler)
Provisionally accepted
- Shaanxi Xueqian Normal University, Xi'an, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The level of a teacher's competence significantly affects young children's short-and long-term psychological and physical development. This study analysed 198 students majoring in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) to investigate the possible connections between teacher-child interaction competencies (measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System: Toddler Version (CLASS-Toddler) and unstructured elements in learning experiences. These learning experiences include practice-based learning, volunteer teaching experience, and competition in teacher education. These findings shed light on the teaching competence of Chinese pre-service nursery teachers, especially those with low scores. The study also found that practice-based learning and volunteer experience through the competition improved teaching competency. Given the significance of teaching competencies in teacher-child interaction for young children, these positive results were encouraging. However, they highlight the need to improve the existing ECCE to equip the pre-service nursery teachers with the skills to enhance teaching competencies in teacher-child interaction.
Keywords: CLASS-Toddler, Nursery education, pre-service nursery teacher, teacher-child interaction, Teaching competence
Received: 05 Dec 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zirui Liu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.