Early childhood care and education (ECEC) relationships’ quality, both with the teachers (Curby, Brock, & Hamre, 2013, Zaslow, et al., 2010) and with peers (Coolahan, Fantuzzo, Mendez, & McDermott, 2000) appear to favor children’s early academic outcomes. In the present study, we investigated the effect of two distinct levels of relationships’ quality: (1) overall classroom quality, assessed by independent observations and (2) dyadic teacher-child relationships, through teacher’s self-report on two indicators of children’s early academic literacy skills (receptive vocabulary and concepts about print), and numeracy skills (arithmetic). Given the associations priory reported between peer relations and academic skills, we also explored the direct and moderator effect of two indicators of social participation (peer acceptance and reciprocal friendships), equally measuring a group-level and a dyadic level of children’s relationships, in this case, within peer relationships. Participants were 184 preschool children (92 girls and 92 boys) from 46 classrooms and the lead teacher in each classroom. All preschool classrooms were located in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, Portugal. Measures for this study were collected in three data points. Literacy and numeracy measures were collected twice over the same school-year in Time 1 and Time 3 (Minterval T1-T3 = 5.17 months; Mage T1 = 63.3 , Mage T3 = 68.9 months). Classroom quality, teacher-child relationships, and social participation measures, were collect in Time 2. Because social skills and behavior problems have been found to be associated with early academic skills (e.g., Arnold, Kupersmidt, Voegles-Lee, & Marshall, 2012), these measures were also collected (T1 and T3). Classroom quality – emotional support and classroom organization were assessed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) Pre-K version (Pianta, LaParo, & Hamre, 2008). Peer acceptance and reciprocal friendships’ social participation indicators were obtained through sociometric measures, namely, sociometric nominations (McCandless & Marshall, 1957) and peer ratings. Literacy receptive vocabulary was measured through Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT, Nogueira de Sousa, translation and adaptation from Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and Concepts About Print (CAP, Clay, 2003). Numeracy skills were measured using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – Revised (WPPSI-R, Wechsler, 2002) arithmetic task. Children’s age, sex, maternal education and dosage (operationalized as the total number of months spent with the lead teacher, targeted during CLASS observations, indicating cumulative exposure to teacher practices) were controlled in all analyses. Multilevel analyses tested the effects of classroom and dyadic teacher-child relationships on academic skills. No effects of teacher-child relationships were found. No effects of classroom quality were identified for any of the academic outcomes. Positive and significant main effects of peer acceptance were found on Arithmetic and positive and significant effects of reciprocal friendships were found on CAP. No moderation effects of social participation was found. Results suggest that differences in classroom quality, do not explain differences on the academic measures included in the study. The same was found regarding the effects of dyadic teacher-child relationships. Results also indicate a positive effect of peer relationships on academic skills.

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