African American preschool teachers and children explore teacher-child relationships with a white teacher educator

This qualitative research project describes what I discovered, as a white teacher educator, as I explored the teacher-child relationships of five African American early childhood educators. Through classroom participation and observation using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), as well as personal interviews, I documented the teacher-child interactions of five African American teachers of preschoolers. The study also attempted to examine the perspective of the African American children themselves using the Young Childrens Appraisal of Teacher Support (Y-CATS), as well as childrens qualitative remarks. Using the framework of Black feminist epistemology, coupled with attachment theory and a socio-historical perspective, the study introduces the ways in which the pedagogical practices of these teachers might lead to new insight for white teacher educators about how they might better prepare preschool teachers to serve African American children more effectively.