ΤEACHER-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS AND CHILDREN'S LITERACY IN KINDERGARTEN AND PRIMARY SCHOOL: Α LITERATURE REVIEW

Teacher-child relationship remains a topic of great interest, as it is known that affects substantially children’s personal and social well-being. Various research efforts have been done in order to examine the interaction between teacher and students, and how the quality of this interaction affects the developmental process of the child. Existing data demonstrate the important role of a supporting school environment on child’s academic skills improvement, especially with regard to language and literacy and mathematics. High-quality teacher-child relationships were closely associated with improved academic performance, and children were motivated to participate in learning processes. On the other hand, conflictual teacher-child relationships could lead to lower levels of academic skills and in some cases with behavior problems. This article aims to review the current literature on this topic, focusing on the role of teacher-child relationship on affecting child’s literacy skills. Finally, we discuss the results of the studies, highlighting further gaps in existing evidence and proposing futures perspectives in research.