  urlLink Teacher Preparation and Teacher-Child Interaction in Preschools. ERIC Digest. This ERIC Digest is by Kontos, Susan and Wilcox-Herzog, Amanda.
From the ERIC Digest: The quality of the interactions between teachers and young children has long been a topic of discussion among early childhood educators and others concerned with young children's development. It is generally agreed that because so much basic early learning (e.g., language, social competence) occurs through interactive experiences when children are very young, the quality of teacher- child interactions contributes substantially to effects that early group care and preschool education have on children (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001).
Many early childhood teachers enter the field with little education beyond high school and minimal specialized education in child development or early childhood education. Researchers have therefore wondered whether the general level of education, specialized training in early childhood development and education, or both, are related to the quality of teachers' interactions with young children.
Many states allow teachers to do their work with little if any specialized education (Phillips, Lande, & Goldberg, 1990). Thus, it is important to know if specialized education in early childhood education is related to teachers' effectiveness on the job. This Digest discusses the research on general and specialized education as factors in teachers' interactions with children. The term teacher is used here to refer to teachers and caregivers for the sake of simplicity. 
