“…Previous research on the predictors of social skills has reported positive effects of exposure to high-quality ECE classrooms (e.g., Curby at al., 2013), namely for children from low-income backgrounds (e.g., Burchinal et al, 2010). Also, studies investigating social skills have typically controlled for children's age (i.e., progression in social competence with age) and gender (i.e., boys generally scoring lower on social competence than girls) (e.g., Fialho & Aguiar, 2017;LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996), while others suggested variance in social skills as a function of language or verbal competence (e.g., Stephens et al, 2023). Importantly, despite the conceptual and empirical links between autonomy support and children's social skills development (e.g., Joussemet et al, 2005;Su-Russell & Russell, 2021), and the limited research, for instance, on the associations between child-centered classrooms and children's prosocial behaviors (e.g., Reio et al, 2002), to our knowledge, no studies have focused on the role of teachers' participation practices on children's social skills, nor investigated links between ECE teacher's practices, ECE quality, children's perceptions of participation, and children's developmental outcomes.…”