SBIR Phase II: Facilitating Early Childhood Teacher and Family Engagement During COVID-19

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是减轻幼儿教师的负担，并确保他们拥有支持儿童学习所需的信息。新冠肺炎颠覆了数以百万计的儿童和家庭的生活，并对低收入儿童造成了不成比例的影响。新一届学龄前儿童的发展水平和技能比以往任何时候都要多样化，教育工作者需要评估他们的需求，帮助他们在学业上迎头赶上。业界领先的幼儿评估工具完全依赖基于观察的评估，即教师根据课堂上的观察对儿童的表现做出判断。基于观察的措施具有局限性，包括时间负担、教师偏见以及由于教师教育和培训的差异而导致的分数变化。观察性评估在偏远地区尤其具有挑战性，因为教师无法实际监测儿童的发育情况。即使当孩子们回到教室时，口罩可能会掩盖学习和发展方面的一些更微妙的线索。这个小企业创新研究第二阶段项目旨在确保对儿童发展的准确评估，这样教师就可以利用这些数据进行量身定制的教学，帮助孩子们赶上新冠肺炎疫情的影响。儿童评估通常是观察性的或直接的。这个第二阶段的项目收集了观察和直接的数据，提供了一个比较数据的机会，并帮助教师了解由于教师偏见或其他因素可能存在评估误差的领域。在第二阶段结束时，预计教师将有机会参加自行指导的教师培训和可靠性认证，这可能有助于确保在课堂上有更一致的评估体验。此外，教育项目将可以使用评估质量监测仪表板，该仪表板寻求突出观察和基于游戏的评估分数之间的差异，并提供一条实现协调的途径。教育项目可能能够定制这项技术，以满足英语学习者的需求，他们经常受到评估者的偏见。最后，教师也许能够利用基于游戏的评估来理解学术和“软”技能的发展。总体而言，这项技术可以为教师提供一个强大的儿童评估系统，帮助他们准确和有效地评估整个儿童的发展。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to ease the burden on early childhood teachers and ensure they have the information needed to support children’s learning. COVID-19 has upended the lives of millions of children and families and disproportionately affected low-income children. The incoming class of preschoolers have increasingly variable levels of development and skills than ever before, and educators need to assess their need and help them to catch up academically. The industry leading tools in early childhood assessment rely solely on observation-based assessment, in which teachers make judgments about a child’s performance based on observations made in the classroom. Observation-based measures have limitations, including time burden, teacher bias, and variability in scoring due to differences in teacher education and training. Observational assessment is especially challenging in the remote context, since teachers were not able to physically monitor children’s development. Even when children are back in the classroom, face masks may shield some of the more subtle cues around learning and development.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to ensure an accurate assessment of child development, so that teachers can leverage the data for tailored instruction to help children catch up from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Child assessments are typically observational or direct. This Phase II project collects both observational and direct data, providing an opportunity to compare the data and help teachers understand areas where there may be assessment error due to teacher bias or other factors. At the end of Phase II, it is anticipated that teachers will have access to a self-led teacher training and reliability certification, which may help to ensure a more consistent assessment experience in the classroom. Moreover, educational programs will have access to an assessment quality monitoring dashboard that seeks to highlight differences between observation and game-based assessment scores and provide a path towards reconciliation. Educational programs may be able to customize this technology to fit the needs of English language learners, who are often subject to assessor bias. Finally, teachers may be able to leverage the game-based assessments to understand both academic and “soft” skill development. Overall, the technology may\provide teachers with a robust child assessment system that helps them to accurately and efficiently assess whole child development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.