Teacher-student interaction and mental health in preschool children

The early childhood education is designed for children up to 5 years and aims at the integral development of the child in their physical, psychological, social and intelectual domains. For teaching to be effective, a good teacher-student interaction is needed. Furthermore, these interactions can impact both positively and negatively on the cognitive and socio-emotional development, in addition to be associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms/syndromes in children. The main goal of this proposed project is to investigate teacher-student interaction at preschools. The specific goals are to evaluate whether the indicators of teacher-student interaction would be associated with development and mental health in children (cognitive, socio-emocioanl and linguage development, and internalyzing and externalyzing symptoms/syndromes). Our proposal will be held together with the epidemiological study already funded by CNPq "Trauma, mental health and early childhood development". The epidemiological study will identify the risk factors for the development of internalizing and externalizing symptoms/syndromes in early childhood, as well as delays in cognitive, socioemotional and language development, with a focus on the central role of traumatic events, in a representative sample of 1250 children who attend public preschools in Embu das Artes, in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. For our current proposal, we will use the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) to study teacher-student interaction. This study is useful both for education programming and practice of teaching, as to aspects of the development and mental health of children. (AU)