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，他们在学校中胜任工作的“准备”最好从他们在课堂上与成人、同龄人和学习/教学活动互动的性质和质量方面来理解。课堂互动也许是儿童利用学校提供的学习和社交机会的最有效的指标。该项目的主要目的是开发，现场测试，并验证幼儿的社会，情感和任务导向的能力的观察评估显示在早期教育课堂上与同龄人，教师和教学活动（课堂评估评分系统儿童版），可用于教师，研究人员和评估人员在大规模的应用。评估将包括按年龄（3-5岁）划分的行为指标，这些指标被组织成关键能力的全球评级量表。在第一年，我们计划使用来自200多个教室（3岁，4岁和5奥尔兹）的1,000多小时录像片段的大型档案，以确定任务导向领域能力的发展适当的行为指标（例如，参与、持久性）、自我调节（例如，自力更生，行为和情绪调节），与同伴的关系（例如，合作;积极的社交能力），与教师的关系（例如，亲密;冲突），以及社会交流（例如，（1）使用语言解决问题。在第一年和第二年，我们进行了一系列的试点研究，在70个教室，每个6名儿童的现场观察，以最终确定行为指标和评级量表。第3年和第4年涉及600名3-，4-，和5岁的儿童在100间教室的观察指标将被缩放的增长轨迹，并与直接评估的学习成绩和教师的报告儿童的能力的短期纵向验证研究。在第五年，我们将进行一项可靠性研究，涉及教师使用观察系统。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，这些程序可以应用于现实世界的大规模应用;例如，我们将开发一个基于网络的培训和可靠性协议，可以成功地由幼儿教师使用。 由此产生的测量系统将提供基于观察的评估儿童的能力，在课堂上与成人，同龄人和活动的互动，与增长规模超过3-5岁的跨度，这是适用于大规模的评估的要求。因此，评估将满足基本的公共卫生需要，以一种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.