Early childhood is a critical developmental period. During this time, children spend significant amounts of time in early childhood education and care (ECEC) learning environments. High-quality ECEC learning environments have been associated with positive developmental outcomes. However, emerging research suggests that aggregating quality assessments mask important variation based on the unit (e.g. classroom, educator, child) and time (e.g. throughout the morning) of assessment. This study examines the variation in the quality of interactions individual children experience from their educators across time using a novel “person-centred” longitudinal analysis, a group-based multi-trajectory model analysis. This analysis was employed to examine the observational changes in the interactions children experienced from their educators (i.e. warm interactions, negative interactions, and language that explicitly promotes language development) over six time points. The relationship between interaction quality children experience and their academic competence, interpersonal relationships, temperament, and learning style was examined. The sample included 610 children from 94 classrooms in Toronto, Canada; however, demographic information was provided by parents for only a subset of the sample (n = 228). The average age of children was 45.52 months (SD = 10.89). We found that most children received little-to-no interactions from their educators. The group-based multi-trajectory model analysis found three subgroups based on the frequency of each interaction type they experience and how that frequency changes: None to Some Quality (37%), Decreasing Quality (29.7%), and Consistently Low (33.3%). Children who were in the Consistently Low profile were more likely to not speak English as their first language at home and were more hostile and less considerate (based on the Classroom Behaviour Inventory) than those who experienced decreases in quality across the morning. Implications for policy, practice, training, and future research are discussed.
