Family-preschool partnership is key to children's development. A large body of research has examined the relationship between the family-preschool partnership and the children's cognitive and socio-emotional development. However, existing measures of family-preschool partnership have some limitations. The aim of the present study was to examine the factorial validity of the Family-Preschool Partnership Scale (FPPS). The FPPS was developed as a comprehensive self-report measure which assesses the family-preschool partnership, incorporating reports from both families and preschool teachers. The family and preschool teacher questionnaires of the FPPS were completed by 205 parents and 171 preschool teachers from seven municipalities in Greece. Results from the study indicated strong evidence for the reliability of the measure. FPPS is a measure that can be used by families with preschool children and preschool teachers to assess their level of partnership. Limitations and recommendations for future directions are discussed.

Families play a central role in shaping young children's learning and development through everyday interactions and shared activities in the home environment. As digital technologies have become increasingly embedded in family life, digital home learning activities have emerged as a meaningful dimension of the broader Home Learning Environment, although research in this area remains limited. The present study examined the psychometric structure and characteristics of digital home learning activities and explored their associations with preschool children's socio-emotional difficulties, as well as demographic factors related to variation in these activities across families. Data were collected from two independent parent samples (N = 308) of families with preschool-aged children. Digital home learning activities were assessed using the digital home learning activities subscale of the Home Learning Environment Questionnaire, while children's socio-emotional difficulties were measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Group A) and selected items from the Child Behavior Checklist (Group B). Confirmatory factor analyses supported a unidimensional structure with satisfactory reliability across both samples. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that digital home learning activities were generally not associated with children's socio-emotional difficulties after demographic characteristics were taken into account. However, parent age and parent education were associated with variation in these activities across families.

Social–emotional development in early childhood lays the groundwork for school readiness, healthy relationships, and long-term well-being. Parents play a pivotal role in this process, shaping children’s emotional awareness, regulation, and social competence through everyday interactions. This literature review synthesizes evidence from 74 peer-reviewed studies to evaluate nine evidence-based parenting interventions targeting parents of preschool-aged children. The programs were analyzed with respect to their objectives, theoretical foundations, components, and the resulting outcomes for both parents and children. Across interventions, consistent benefits emerged in children, including improved emotion recognition, regulation, empathy, and prosocial behavior, as well as reductions in internalizing problems. Parents also gained in confidence and positive discipline practices. Key elements linked to effectiveness included active parent skill-building (such as modeling, role play, and guided practice), structured parent–child interactions, multi-component designs integrating home and school contexts, and flexible delivery formats that adapt to family needs. These findings underscore the critical role of parenting interventions as an evidence-based method to enhance preschoolers’ social–emotional development.

The article investigates how transferable skills are defined, supported, and evidenced in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) doctoral training in Norway and Greece. Addressing a documented gap—fragmented definitions and weak operationalisation across Europe—it combines semi-structured interviews with doctoral researchers (n=20) and a document scan of institutional websites and course catalogues (n=70). The review assessed visibility, framing, and assessment of transferable-skills provision; interviews traced candidates’ reported development through supervision, collaboration, and day-to-day research practice. Results show shared formal recognition but divergent implementation. In Norway—via research-school infrastructures, competency frameworks, and structured ties to employment—transferable skills are purposefully integrated and periodically monitored. In Greece, references appear largely rhetorical: limited coursework, few institutional mechanisms, and minimal cross-sector engagement. Across both settings, candidates depict skill acquisition as tacit and emergent rather than explicitly taught. The analysis identifies a persistent policy–practice delta. Governance capacity and institutional culture condition what becomes visible as “skill” and where responsibility for its development is located. The study contributes comparative, evidence-based guidance on aligning doctoral curricula and supervisory practice with labour-market expectations, clarifying where targeted coursework, assessment, and partnership structures are most likely to close the implementation gap.

Background/Objectives: This study examined the association between parental physical activity and preschool children’s physical activity and social behavior. Methods: Participants were 151 preschool children (70 girls, 81 boys; Mage = 52.51 months, SD = 3.38) attending public and private kindergartens in Thessaloniki (Greece) and Nicosia (Cyprus). Children’s psychosocial development was assessed by kindergarten teachers using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, while parents reported their own and their children’s physical activity through the Preschool-age Children’s Physical Activity Questionnaire (home version). Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations were computed, and the main hypotheses were tested using multiple linear regression analyses. Results: Results indicated a consistent positive association between parental physical activity and children’s physical activity across intensity levels. Parental physical activity frequency and duration during both weekdays and weekends was significantly associated with children’s low-, moderate-, and vigorous-intensity physical activity, while parental beliefs about physical activity were negatively associated with children’s sedentary behavior. In contrast, parental physical activity showed no significant association with all indicators of social behavior at school, including emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and prosocial behavior. Conclusions: Overall, the findings support the role of parental physical activity as an important correlate of preschool children’s physical activity behavior, while its direct association with broader psychosocial development appears small. These results highlight the importance of parental role modeling and attitudes toward physical activity, particularly in shaping children’s movement behaviors.

Previous research often frames teacher–student dependency as negative, largely based on evidence from individualistic contexts, while studies in collectivistic settings suggest it may reflect a positive relational quality. However, the role of cultural values and potential subtypes of emotional dependency—seeking attention and approval versus clinginess and affection seeking— remains underexplored. This study examined (a) associations between cultural values and teachers’ perceptions of closeness and conflict with emotionally dependent children and (b) whether these perceptions differ across dependency subtypes. The sample consisted of 1,680 preschool teachers from seven European countries using a within-participant vignette design. Multilevel analyses showed that independent self-construal was associated with higher closeness and lower conflict, whereas interdependent self-construal predicted higher conflict. At the country level, higher individualism was linked to more conflict and less closeness. Teachers perceived seeking attention and approval as less conflictual than clinginess and affection seeking.

In this study, teachers applied individual behavioral support as part of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS). This study reports on a check-in, check-out (CICO) intervention with six matched pairs from Finland and Greece, primarily students with aggressive, noisy, impulsive and hyperactive behavior. Daily report card (DRC) data were collected and evaluated for effectiveness. A triangulation of analysis methods was conducted using both visual and statistical analyses for both within- and between-individual differences. According to visual analysis, the intervention showed positive effects for nine out of twelve students, and Tau-U analysis supported these individual effects. Social validity and fidelity ratings indicate good usability among teachers in both countries. These encouraging results suggest that individual CICO support can also be used effectively in SWPBIS schools in European cultural contexts.

This study examined the influence of student-teacher relationships and school infrastructure on preschool children's motor creativity, encompassing fluency, originality, and imagination. Twenty teachers completed the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale for 200 children (10 children per teacher). The research team recorded aspects of the school's physical environment through Movement Play Scale and assessed children's motor creativity via the Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement test. The results revealed that dimensions of the student-teacher relationship, such as conflict and dependency, negatively impacted fluency, and originality components of motor creativity. Contrary to expectations, teacher participation in movement activities did not significantly contribute to motor creativity, potentially due to over-direction limiting children's autonomy. Similarly, the school's infrastructures were negatively linked to fluency and originality. The findings underscore the importance of nurturing autonomy-supportive environments and balancing guidance with opportunities for independent exploration. Teachers should also invest in adaptable educational spaces to foster creativity without encouraging dependency. This study emphasizes the critical role of supportive relational and environmental factors in shaping preschool children's creative movement abilities.

This cross-cultural study investigated the factorial structure and the measurement invariance of the Teacher-Child Dependency Scale (TCDS) and Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS-SF) in Greece and China. The sample consisted of 346 children (Greece: 170, China: 176) and 44 teachers across 18 Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings. A two-factor structure of the TCDS - emotional dependency and physical dependency was supported and found to be invariant across cultures. Chinese teachers reported higher levels of closeness and physical dependency than their Greek counterparts, whereas emotional dependency was similar across countries. Teacher-child closeness negatively predicted internalizing and externalizing problems in both contexts. However, cultural differences emerged: emotional dependency significantly predicted behavioral issues in Greek children, whereas physical dependency played a more prominent role in internalizing issues for Chinese children. These results highlight the role of cultural contexts in shaping teacher-child relationships and suggest the need for culturally tailored practices and interventions in ECEC.

Background/Objectives: Motor creativity is a vital component of preschoolers’ growth and development. However, its underlying determinants remain largely underexplored. This study investigates the interrelationship among playful behavior, social profile, and motor creativity in preschool children, emphasizing its implications for holistic health and development. Methods: A total of 200 children and their kindergarten teachers from Greece participated in the study. The Children’s Playfulness Scale (CPS) was employed to assess the children’s playfulness, while a sociometric test was used to evaluate their social standing within peer groups. Motor creativity was measured through TCAM, a performance-based test focusing on fluency, imagination, and originality. Results: The findings revealed that the dimensions of playful behavior, particularly motor and social playfulness, significantly and positively influenced motor creativity, a core component of physical and mental health in early childhood. Conversely, certain aspects of social behavior had a negative association with imaginative capacities. Conclusions: The study underscores the critical role of movement-based playful activities in fostering children’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health. It highlights the need for educators to design developmentally appropriate motor play activities that cultivate creativity and social integration, promoting a balanced and health-oriented early education framework. The results contribute to educational policy and practice by reinforcing the importance of structured motor play in supporting preschoolers’ well-being and comprehensive development.

The present study contributes to the development of effective measures to evaluate classroom climate, especially in elementary education where these remain limited. In addition, it addresses a typical "flaw" of several studies by approaching classroom climate as a group-level construct rather than an individual characteristic. Following a multilevel approach, we attempted to establish validity evidence for an adapted version of the Classroom Behavioral Climate (CBC) questionnaire and examine its equivalence across two contexts. The participants included 2963 students from 176 fourth and fifth grade classes. Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analyses resulted in a shorter version of the CBC with three correlated factors in both countries. Two-level models performed better than the single-level models. Configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance was also achieved. The study highlights the need for researchers and practitioners to use appropriate methods and instruments to evaluate the classroom environment based on their research aims and intended use.

The main aim of this study is to explore early childhood teachers’ social self-efficacy in Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. In addition, this study examines the validity of the factorial structure of the Teachers’ Social Self-Efficacy Scale (TSSES). A sample of 349 early childhood teachers across the three countries participated in this study. An exploratory analysis and then a confirmatory factor analysis were employed to reveal the structure of the TSSES. Configural and metric invariance were established for the one-factor structure of the TSSES. The results showed that teachers in Portugal and Cyprus experience high levels of social self-efficacy, whereas Greek teachers experience moderate to high levels of social self-efficacy. The TSSES seems to be a reliable instrument for assessing social self-efficacy beliefs. Possible implications for practice are also discussed.

Family-preschool partnership is recognised as an important relationship between parents and teachers contributing to preschool child outcomes which has received increasing attention the last decades. This has led to the development of several tools measuring different aspects of family-preschool partnership. A synthesis of the information according to the psychometric properties of these measures is lacking and would inform researchers in choosing measures when evaluating family-preschool partnerships. The main purpose of this article was therefore to find instruments aiming to assess family-preschool partnership that have been tested for their psychometric properties and to review these properties based on the frequency with which researchers have tested them. Four electronic databases were searched using the key words: family-preschool partnership, parental engagement, family involvement, parent involvement, parent-teacher relationship combined with scale, measure, measuring, assessment, evaluation, psychometric, test. Fifteen tools assessing family-preschool partnership were identified, of which only seven had been tested more than once for their psychometric properties. The majority of the existing measures require extra validation work. Taking into consideration the interest in this relationship and its effects on preschool child development, it seems important for the field to promote the use of validated and well-established measures.

Τeachers’ interpersonal behaviour is considered important for the quality of the student–teacher relationship. The present study examined teachers’ and students’ perceptions regarding teachers’ interpersonal behaviour and the degree of their agreement at the class level. Moreover, this study investigated whether possible differences between them are associated with the teachers’ and classes’ characteristics. Participants were 1669 students and 43 secondary teachers within 85 secondary classrooms in Greece. The Greek version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction was used to assess eight aspects of teachers’ interpersonal behaviour. A high degree of divergence between teachers’ self-perceptions and students’ perceptions about their teachers’ interpersonal behaviour was found. Multiple regression analyses showed that the differences among teachers’ and students’ perceptions can partially be explained by teachers’ years of teaching experience and the degree level, as well as the class educational level. Findings of this study provide specific practical implications.

Three dimensions of child-teacher relationships (derived from the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale) closeness, conflict and dependency have been conceptualized and investigated. In individualistic cultures a close relationship has been associated with children's academic performance and behavioural adjustment, conflictual relationships have been associated with maladjustment and externalising behaviours, and the dependency dimension has been negatively associated with closeness. We expand previous studies by first investigating the factor structure of the STRs amongst 2,130 preschool children and their 267 teachers in a collectivistic culture, Greece. Second, we investigated effects of child (gender, age, country of origin and special educational needs), teacher (teacher gender, age and affective well-being), and preschool characteristics (school-type, number of children, observed quality using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R), on STRS. Using exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM) adjusting for differences between preschools we replicated the three-factor solution of the STRS. Consistent with previous studies in collectivistic cultures, close-ness and dependency were positively (not negatively) associated. Children's gender and teachers' affective well-being were found to be consistently associated with all three dimensions of the STRS. In conclusion, the STRS can capture the relationship accurately in a Greek early years setting, and the analysis has demonstrated that the three STRS dimensions are associated with different child and teacher characteristics.

There is a rich literature about the benefits of the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) for schools. However, evidence on teacher-related outcomes is relatively limited. The current study examines the effect of the PBIS Tier 1 implementation on collective teacher efficacy (CTE). Participants were 530 teachers from 60 primary schools in Cyprus and Greece, who completed the Collective Teacher Efficacy Belief Scale (CTEBS) before and after a 1-year PBIS implementation. The Greek language version of the instrument was tested and validated. Results were in line with the original two-dimensional structure of instructional strategies and behavioral management, with adequate internal consistency (omega = 0.89 and omega = 0.87, respectively). Multilevel analyses showed that premeasurement and Tier 1 implementation fidelity along with selected teachers' demographic characteristics accounted for a considerable amount of variance of CTE's both dimensions (30.84% and 25.43% for instructional strategies and behavioral management, respectively). The results suggest that PBIS Tier 1 training and subsequent implementation contributes to teachers' collective belief that they can provide quality teaching opportunities and manage unexpected behaviors as a team. Schools are encouraged to consider the application of whole-school approaches for improvement and actively engage all school staff in their efforts. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

The Preschool Early Numeracy Skills Test-Brief Version (PENS-B) is a measure of early numeracy skills, developed and mainly used in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the factorial validity and measurement invariance across gender of PENS-B in the Greek educational context. PENS-B was administered to 906 preschool children (473 boys, 433 girls), randomly selected from 84 kindergarten classrooms. A 2PL unidimensional and multidimensional item response theory analysis, using cross-validation procedures, were used to analyze the data. Results showed that responses to 20 items can be adequately explained by a two-dimensional model (Numbering Relations and Arithmetic Operations). Application of differential item functioning procedures did not detect any gender bias. Numeracy Relation comprises 16 items, which assess low levels of this latent trait. On the other hand, four items capture average levels of Arithmetic Operations. Total information curves revealed that both dimensions measure with precision only a small area of their underlying latent trait.

Student-teacher interpersonal relationships contribute significantly to the academic trajectory and achievement of children and adolescents. The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) is one of the most widely applied measures for assessing students' perceptions about the teachers' interpersonal behaviour. QTI comprises eight subscales that are assumed to follow a circumplex model. Prior studies on QTI's psychometric properties are inconclusive and report mixed findings. The purpose of this study was to examine the applicability of QTI in the Greek cultural context, by testing its circumplex structure and levels of reliability. QTI was administered to 1669 secondary education students, from 85 different classrooms. A cross-validation approach and a variety of statistical techniques were employed. Subscales' internal consistency and their ability to discriminate among classes were satisfactory. Exploratory statistical techniques provided initial support of the circular pattern. Application of a specifically designed package for testing the circumplex structure of an instrument, showed that a model in which the eight QTI subscales are placed on the circumference of a circle with equal distances form the centre was tenable. However, the assumption of equal distances was not confirmed. Deviation from the theoretical position of the subscales was mainly due to students' difficulty to discriminate teachers' proximity behaviour, a finding reported in various studies and across different cultural contexts. Suggestions for improving the psychometric properties of the QTI are discussed.

Teachers’ social self-efficacy is an important construct that has not been examined adequately in education yet. Developing a comprehensive understanding of teachers’ social self-efficacy requires measuring these beliefs in the social domain of teachers’ functioning. This study developed the Teachers’ Social Self-Efficacy Scale (TSSES) scale and investigated its psychometric properties in a total sample of 650 preschool teachers from Greece. Results from factor analysis revealed a bi-factor model underlying a global TSSE factor and five specific factors. Evidence of validity was obtained with the TSSES prediction on the closeness and conflict dimensions of teacher–student relationship quality. Findings showed that the TSSES can be considered as a valid and reliable instrument. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.