This study takes an ecological approach to examine how children with developmental language disorder (DLD) interact with their classmates within early childhood special education (ECSE) inclusive classrooms. Participants were 124 children with DLD, 56 children with other disabilities, and 247 typically developing children (Mage = 52.42 months, SD = 6.27) from 56 ECSE inclusive classrooms. Results of social network analysis showed that children with DLD had significantly smaller peer social networks and were more likely to be isolated. Children tended to interact with peers with the same DLD status. These effects of children's DLD status were above and beyond the effects of children's social pragmatics skills.

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These results suggest that the quality of the teacher-child relationship for children with DLDs during preschool is associated within their learning-related behaviours in the classroom both concurrently and in the subsequent year. Findings suggest that teacher-child relationships should be explored as a mechanism for improving the learning-related behaviours of children with DLDs.

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