Assessing Global and Math-Specific Teacher-Child Interaction Quality in Early Childcare Settings: A Systematic Literature Review of Instruments Used in Reseach

Studies show that processes like teacher-child interactions are a key dimension of childcare quality and that global and domain-specific interactions seem to have different effects on child development. A variety of instruments have been used to assess quality in the field of early childhood research. The aim of this study was to identify and discuss instruments that assess global and/or math-specific interaction quality in childcare settings (birth to school-entry). In the systematic literature review, we found 4211 publications using instruments that assess global and/or math-specific interaction quality, of which 148 remained after a screening of titles, abstracts, and full-texts. In all, 55 instruments assessing interaction quality were identified and analyzed regarding their (sub)scales, items, method, procedure, children's age, reliability, and validity. We identified more instruments measuring global aspects of teacher-child interactions than measuring math-specific aspects. In general, some instruments might be over- or underrepresented, due to linguistic and publication bias.