Observation of Young Children's Competence in Classroom

描述(由申请人提供)： 对于3至5岁的儿童来说，根据他们在课堂上与成年人、与同龄人以及与学习/教学活动互动的性质和质量，最能理解他们在学校“准备好”发挥作用的能力。课堂互动也许是儿童如何利用学校提供的学习和社交机会的最有效指标。该项目的主要目的是开发、实地测试和验证幼儿的社会、情感和任务导向能力的观察性评估，该评估在早期教育课堂上与同伴、教师和教学活动(课堂评估评分系统-儿童版)一起展示，可供教师、研究人员和评估者在规模应用中使用。评估将包括按年龄(3-5岁)衡量的行为指标，这些指标被组织成关键能力的全球评级标准。在第一年，我们计划使用来自200多个教室(3、4和5岁)的1000多个小时的大量视频片段来确定适合发展的行为指标，以衡量任务导向(例如，参与度、坚持性)、自我调节(例如，自立、行为和情绪调节)、与同伴的关系(例如，合作；积极的社会性)、与老师的关系(例如，亲密关系、冲突)和社交沟通(例如，启动、使用语言解决问题)等领域的能力。在第一年和第二年，我们进行了一系列的先导性研究，对70个教室中每个教室的6名儿童进行了现场观察，以最终确定行为指标和评定量表。第三年和第四年对100个教室的600名3岁、4岁和5岁儿童进行了一项短期纵向验证研究，其中观察指标将根据成长轨迹进行衡量，并与对学业成绩的直接评估和教师对儿童能力的报告相关联。在第五年，我们将进行一项有关教师使用观测系统的可靠性研究。在整个项目期间，我们将开发和现场测试培训材料和可靠性程序，这些材料和程序可应用于真实世界的大规模应用程序；例如，我们将开发一种可供学龄前教师成功使用的基于网络的培训和可靠性协议。 由此产生的测量系统将提供基于观察的评估，以评估儿童在与成人、同龄人和活动的课堂互动中的能力，并在3-5岁跨度内进行增长，这适用于大规模评估的需求。因此，评估将满足基本的公共卫生需要，即以对干预敏感的方式描述个别儿童的能力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): For children between the ages of 3 and 5, their "readiness" to function competently in school is best understood in terms of the nature and quality of their interactions in classrooms with adults, with peers, and with learning/instructional activities. Classroom interactions provide perhaps the most valid indicator of the manner in which children make use of the learning and social opportunities provided in school. The principal aim of the project is to develop, field-test, and validate an observational assessment of young children's social, emotional and task-oriented competence as displayed in early education classrooms with peers, teachers, and instructional activities (The Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Child Version) that can be used by teachers, researchers, and evaluators in at-scale applications. The assessment will consist of behavioral indicators scaled in terms of age (3-5 years) that are organized into global rating scales for key competencies. In the first year, we plan to use a large archive of more than 1,000 hours of videotape footage from over 200 classrooms (of 3, 4, and 5 year olds) to identify developmentally appropriate behavioral indicators for competencies in the domains of task-orientation (e.g., engagement, persistence), self-regulation (e.g., self-reliance, behavioral and emotional regulation), relationships with peers (e.g., cooperation; positive sociability), relationships with teacher (e.g., closeness; conflict), and social communication (e.g., initiation, use of language for problem solving). In the first and second years we conduct a series of pilot studies using live observation of 6 children in each of 70 classrooms to finalize behavioral indicators and rating scales. Years 3 and 4 involve a short-term longitudinal validation study of 600 3-, 4-, and 5-year old children in 100 classrooms in which the observational indicators will be scaled for growth trajectories and correlated with direct assessments of academic performance and teachers' reports of children's competence. In year 5 we will conduct a reliability study involving teachers' use of the observational system. Throughout the project period we will develop and field-test training materials and reliability procedures that can be applied in real-world, at-scale applications; for example we will develop a web-based training and reliability protocol that can be used successfully by preschool teachers. The resulting measurement system will provide observationally based assessment of children's competence in classroom interactions with adults, peers, and activities, with growth scaled over the 3-5 age span, that is applicable to demands of large-scale assessments. As such, the assessment will meet a basic public health need to describe individual children's competencies in a manner that is sensitive to intervention.