Poster #185 - Using Early Developmental Tools as Predictors of Skills and Competencies in Kindergarteners

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - School Readiness/Childcare

Integrative Statement

When children are young, the experiences they have exploring, learning and interacting with others in a variety of settings can influence their development. For many years, results from a development instrument has shown that there is great variability in children’s skills and competencies during Kindergarten. This instrument measures children’s performance in five core areas of early child development that are known to be good predictors of adult health, education and social outcomes. These research results prompted an interdisciplinary research team of experts in child development, in collaboration with teachers, administrators and community stakeholders to develop a new tool to assess the experiences of children prior to Kindergarten in order to better understand these results. There has been a gap in the education field where front line workers know of the existing challenges and what needs to be done but have been lacking concrete or systematically collected data/evidence to show these trends. Linking the data of these tools can provide a better understanding of the social determinants of early childhood development in hopes to optimize childhood outcomes. From this data we are taking a closer look into the relationship between school readiness attributes between the tools to evaluate how predictive these early childhood experiences are of performance later into the school year.
In the present study, 1280 parents/guardians from 10 school districts throughout British Columbia, Canada, reported on the frequency with which they talked to their children about emotions (positive, negative) of the child and others, as well as the frequency of social experiences, using the Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (CHEQ), a new tool for assessing children’s experiences during the preschool years. Five months later in the Kindergarten year, Kindergarten teachers reported on children’s skills and competencies using the Early Development Instrument (EDI).
An examination of the correlations between frequency of emotion-related conversations reported on the CHEQ and emotional maturity reported on the EDI showed a significant correlation (r =.073, p < .05). In addition, results showed a significant correlation between social experiences (CHEQ) and social competencies (EDI), r =.064, p <0.5 These findings not only highlight the valuable role of parents/guardians in providing experiences for children during the preschool years that influence their skills during Kindergarten, but also the value of collecting this information using a tool such as the CHEQ, where the information can be used in practical ways by teachers, administrators and early years leaders to strategically provide programming that targets social and emotional experiences in order to support children prior to Kindergarten in meaningful ways.

Authors

• Alisa Almas, The University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Gioia Stokovac, The University of British Columbia
  Non-Presenting Author