1-038 - Measuring Quality in Early Childhood Education: Issues and Promising new Instruments

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Early care and education (ECE) is viewed as one of the most promising means to increase opportunities for all children (Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Whereas there are large long-term impacts in small clinical trials (Campbell et al., 2011; 2014; Heckman, 2011; Cuhna & Heckman, 2007) and moderate to large impacts in quasi-experimental studies (Gormley et al, 2007; Yoshikawa & Weiland, 2013), associations between widely-used measures of ECE classroom quality and child outcomes are surprisingly small (see Burchinal et al., 2015 for review). Recent examinations of the most widely-used measures of ECE quality, the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (Harms et al, 1991) and Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pianta et al., 2008) have raised questions about their psychometric properties, the inter-rater reliability criteria for certifying data collectors, and the lack of focus on content of teaching practices. The purpose of this symposium is to briefly outline some of the concerns with the two widely used measures, and then to describe some promising new measures of ECE quality.
The proposed symposium consists of four papers that describe some of these issues in the first paper and some of the most promising new instruments for measuring the quality of preschool ECE in the last three papers. These measures incorporate many of recommended best practices such of integrating measures of quality of instruction, child assessments, and instructional modules for individualization, focusing closely on the frequency and quality of the language exchanges between teachers and children, and describing the content of the pedagogy.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Margaret Burchinal, UNC Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• Challenges in Using Widely-used Observational Quality Ratings - Presenting Author: Margaret Burchinal, UNC Chapel Hill

• Using Assessment and the OLOS Observation System to Inform and Promote Effective Early Learning Opportunities for Young Children - Presenting Author: Carol McDonald Connor, University of California, Irvine; Deborah Vandell, University of California, Irvine; Nicole Sparapani, University of California - Davis

• The Value of Classroom Observations Using Behavioral Measures: Setting Goals for Changes in Practice in Pre-K - Presenting Author: Dale Clark Farran, Vanderbilt University; Caroline Heaton Christopher, Vanderbilt University; Kimberly Turner Nesbitt, University of New Hampshire; Deanna Nicole Meador, Vanderbilt University

• Understanding the Quality of Classroom Language Learning Environments Using the Language Interaction Snapshot - Presenting Author: Carol Scheffner Hammer, Columbia University; Brook Sawyer, Lehigh University