Objectives The purposes of this study are to explore latent profiles of kindergarten teachers with teacher-children interaction (T-CI) and to analyse the relationship between teachers' personal factors and T-CI profiles. Methods The survey for data collection was conducted from January 10 to January 31, 2024, targeting 409 teachers working at kindergartens in the metropolitan area. We composed T-CI of kindergarten teacher into emotional, verbal, and behavioral interaction, and analyzed latent profiles according to their T-CI level. The types of T-CI profiles derived from the latent profile analysis were identified, and a multinomial logistic regression was performed to analyze the effect of kindergarten teachers' personal factors on the T-CI profiles. Results The results revealed that we classified four T-CI profiles: the ‘passive interaction type’, which had very low levels of emotional, verbal, and behavioral interaction related to T-CI, was 5.62% of all kindergarten teachers, the ‘non-verbal interaction type’, which had relatively low emotional, verbal, and behavioral interaction levels, was 43.03% of all, the ‘affective interaction-centered type’, which had average level of each competence, was 26.41% of all, the ‘proactive interaction type’, which had relatively high level of each competence, was 24.94% of all. As a result of analyzing the effect of the teacher's personal factors on the T-CI profile, it was found that the teacher's age, education, and experience had a significant effect on the T-CI profile. Conclusions Based on the results, this study suggests that there are various groups according to the level of T-CI within the kindergarten teacher group, rather than considering the kindergarten teacher as the ‘cohort group’ in relation to T-CI. We also suggest that customized approach considering the profile characteristics related to T-CI is required.
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