Cross-cultural considerations in measuring classroom quality: Ghanaian preschool educators’ agreements and disagreements with standard-based instruments

• In Event: ECD measurment and assessment: Student, classroom, and home-based measures

Proposal

While early childhood education (ECE) programs are expanding rapidly across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the quality of these programs, and their effectiveness when implemented at scale, remains unclear. Generally, the vast majority of studies assessing classroom quality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have focused on adapting instruments developed for use in high-income countries (e.g., Seidman et al., 2013; UNESCO, 2017). But quality is a value-laden and culturally-based concept (OECD, 2013) and its conceptualization may vary across different cultural contexts (Greenfield, 2016). As efforts to develop universal metrics of ECE classroom quality increase, particularly in LMICs, establishing measures that are theoretically-grounded and contextually-adapted is needed. Yet little is known about the conceptual and empirical nature of ECE classroom processes in LMICs generally, and in SSA in particular. In this study, we examined what Ghanaian educators perceive as critical elements of ECE quality and how contextual considerations might affect their teaching practices.
Twenty educators (14 teachers and 6 school directors) in Ghana participated in semi-structured interviews supplemented by critical discussion of one of the primary tools used to assess quality—the Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS Pre-K version; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008). The CLASS distinguishes 10 dimensions of quality categorized into three broad domains: Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support. Following a protocol used by Pastori and Pagani (2017), four set of questions guided the discussion:1) Do any dimensions and indicators in the instrument seems familiar? 2) What dimensions or indicators would you eliminate and why? 3) What dimension or indicator would you add? and 4) What dimensions do you perceive as more exposed to a different cultural interpretation, if any? Data were analyzed following procedures by Corbin and Strauss (2008), using grounded theory and open coding. We used neutral codes around four pre-specified themes: agreements, disagreements, differences and missing elements.
Participants unanimously emphasized the centrality of teachers’ sensitivity to children’s emotional and academic needs, the use of different instructional modalities in stimulating children’s thinking and language. However, they also pointed out a number of issues that were not sufficiently addressed by the CLASS (see Table 1). Many teachers pointed out that contextual factors—such as working with large class sizes, multilingual and multi-age student population, children’s home challenges related to poverty, food insecurity and violence exposure—shape teacher-child interactions and overall classroom climate. They highlighted that these were not taken into consideration in the tool. Also, the educators interpreted some of the quality indicators in a way that echoed cultural theories of child development, and expectations for schooling and children’s education that do not align with the underlying cultural assumption of the CLASS. For example, many educators mentioned that children’s learning as conceptualized in the CLASS emphasizes cognitive and language development, while missing opportunities for the development of social skills.
The results expand our understanding of educational quality in diverse contexts and provide insights that can inform the development and use of metrics to assess classroom environments through a culturally sensitive lens.
 
Table 1. Main points highlighted by the educators
Theme Sample Educator Response
Agreements Teacher sensitivity
“Children are different, and their development too are different. So, it is important to be aware of those who need extra support so you can help them.”
Instructional learning formats
“Children learn easily when they see, hear and touch. Also, the teacher should not center lessons and activities on few children but engage all children in the teaching and learning process.”
Disagreements Positive Climate
“Generally, the ideal situation is that an early childhood classroom has a positive climate to facilitate children’s learning. But looking at our cultural and economic context these indicators are not applicable. For example, “excited about learning and many instances of laughter and smiling” will be difficult especially in deprived communities when children come to school without food. Their facial expressions alone will score your class as low quality”
Behavior management
“The children are many. You can’t have few instances of misbehavior … If you go to a KG classroom and some of these things are happening, I do not think it should be problem.”
Productivity
“The number of children in the classroom plays a key role when it comes to productivity. In the Western countries where there are about 15 children in a classroom, this is possible. The children are about 60 in the classroom. The teacher can’t be very productive in such a situation…”
Regard for student perspectives
“Children having freedom of movement is a challenge. With a large class size and limited space, you won’t be very happy when a child gets up and moves frequently.”
Differences Positive Climate
“The positive climate can be interpreted as pampering the children, you are spoiling them. You have to shout at them to know the right from the wrong…”
Negative climate
“Yelling at children to establish control will not be a negative climate. I will interpret this as a way of keeping activities moving in the classroom. Because if you don’t yell at them, they do not see you as being serious…”
Regard for student perspectives
“Children moving freely during activities can be interpreted as the teacher not doing anything and children moving about without doing anything. At least, there should be restriction of movement, especially when they are engaged in activities…
Missing Elements Social Skills
“I did not see anything like social skills in it. It is very important. How the child relates with others aside the home and the school.”

Authors

• Esinam Ami Avornyo, University of Pennsylvania

• Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania